I'm in a similar situation -- I write a lot of long-running hadoop jobs where I won't know the results for an hour or more. I try to "think twice, run once". W

I'm in a similar situation -- I write a lot of long-running hadoop jobs where I won't know the results for an hour or more. I try to "think twice, run once". When I'm debugging, I'll kick off several variants to test different ideas, and write myself notes on what I expect to learn from each one when it finishes. Then I can go off and work on something else until it's done, and use the notes to get myself back into the debugging groove. Without the notes, I'd find myself an hour later struggling to remember why I even ran a particular variant.