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Hey, that's me! Let me share a tip that might work for you as well then: some times you will procrastinate heavily because you're have a hard problem with no s

Hey, that's me! Let me share a tip that might work for you as well then: some times you will procrastinate heavily because you're have a hard problem with no solution in sight. You'll want to make some semblance of progress, but you just can't sit down and concretely work on it. It's by design! Your subconscious keeps working in the background, thinking outside the box until one day out of nowhere you get the solution right before your eyes. I'm not sure it's possible to think outside the box if you're not procrastinating, since you need other types of unrelated input for your brain to make a different type of association and reach a conclusion from another perspective. I'd like to read more about this phenomenon but has been one of my best tricks up my sleeve in my career. Recently I've been trying to write down a complex piece of code, the corner stone of my application critical to the whole business. I've spent weeks on that problem, tried and failed to design a working solution, spent hours reading papers during working time instead of writing anything, browsing HN mindlessly, until after 2 months, out of the blue at 4am looking at cat pics on reddit I found the answer. And I'm now enjoying this newfound wave of productivity until my next hard problem. EDIT: I think it's called the Eureka effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect EDIT 2: other things I found that help the Eureka effect: * taking a shower * walking * mindless consuming (watching a movie, browsing youtube or reddit) * reading a book * sleep deprivation

52-6F-62 8y ago
To your Eureka effect list (all good and they've helped me as well), I would add: * sleeping on it — I can't count how many times I would dream up solutions and implement them the next day. Knew an old Vietnamese electronic tech in the film industry who experienced this regularly while debugging complex lighting ballasts * alcohol — completely subjective. I find up to a point it can break down a mental barrier or two. Sometimes so can a bloody ugly hangover. Then again, in the second case you might be putting the actual work off for another day or so... * heavier exercise — a good run, or strength routine in the morning does more to clear my head and prepare me for a day than anything else I've tried. Similarly has a mentally rejuvenating effect like walking when you splice it in between other work— only it tends to be more of a 'shock to the system' method like a little too much indulgence in the former point.

52-6F-62 8y ago

To your Eureka effect list (all good and they've helped me as well), I would add: * sleeping on it — I can't count how many times I would dream up solutions and implement them the next day. Knew an old Vietnamese electronic tech in the film industry who experienced this regularly while debugging complex lighting ballasts * alcohol — completely subjective. I find up to a point it can break down a mental barrier or two. Sometimes so can a bloody ugly hangover. Then again, in the second case you might be putting the actual work off for another day or so... * heavier exercise — a good run, or strength routine in the morning does more to clear my head and prepare me for a day than anything else I've tried. Similarly has a mentally rejuvenating effect like walking when you splice it in between other work— only it tends to be more of a 'shock to the system' method like a little too much indulgence in the former point.