5 ms·

Plus your brain will crunch things in the background. How many time as a developer have you "solved" a problem you've been stuck on for hours or days while show

Plus your brain will crunch things in the background. How many time as a developer have you "solved" a problem you've been stuck on for hours or days while showering or traveling to work. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.

Brigadirk 8y ago
I share your experience. But, I've recently read a book, The Mind is Flat by Nick Chater, a psychologist, wherein he argues that your brain does not crunch anything in the background, and only does what it focuses on. However, the situation you outlined still occurs because you can get stuck in a certain paradigm (e.g. "this name that I can't remember definitely starts with 's'"), which you effectively reset, in addition to simply returning re-energised. Still a good argument for breaks and less strenuous working hours.
- jack_pp 8y ago
  There are times when you're not focusing on anything specific, hence why you get ideas / breakthroughs in the shower, or when looking out of the window of a train / car or just mindlessly walking, because you're not focusing on anything and your System1 can solve stuff. Though I feel that System1 can't work while System2 is focusing on other stuff like playing games or browsing social media so I don't think they're necessarily running in parallel.
- jpfed 8y ago
  I call this the "attractor basin hypothesis" of problem solving- your mental state is in one attractor basin and you need to be in a different one; a break gives you another chance to enter the right one. If true, it may be possible to get the same benefit as taking a break and returning to the work by doing something that jolts you out of your current attractor basin. Maybe that just means asking the right question (c.f. oblique strategies).
  - Brigadirk 8y ago
    Interesting idea. I'm currently learning German, which is rather similar to my native Dutch. Yet I'm learning most of it through English, because that's simply the language people tend to use for instruction material. Every now and then when I'm doing English to German translation, I find myself puzzled and then have to remind myself "think about the Dutch word" only to then immediately understand/recall the German cognate. I'm sure someone talking to me in Dutch could have the same effect, and more broadly speaking, another 'attractor basin' may be activated by random chance, like the tired cliche of someone in a movie figuring out the 'case' as a result of their spouse or child mentioning something unrelated yet apparently analogous.
- naasking 8y ago
  Yes, the brain doesn't crunch anything in the background, but your brain is a powerful association engine. Sometimes an outside stimulus will activate an association that will then associate with a solution you've been looking for. This is what happens in the shower: you allow your mind to wander, aka free-associate, and suddenly new possibilities unfold.
52-6F-62 8y ago
For me that one happens very often when I'm falling asleep, in my dreams, after waking in the middle of the night, or in the early hours before I get up. Many of my more annoying problems have been solved that way. I knew an old Vietnamese refugee who was an electrical engineer working on maintaining and repairing portable stage lighting ballasts. He used to tell me how he would dream about the circuits and debug them then after spending a week of just staring dumbly at the physical thing—not accomplishing anything while at work, then come in the next day and finish inside of an hour.
- asdffdsa 8y ago
  My experience echoes that of the Vietnamese electrical engineer. Maybe I think much differently than others, but sometimes on difficult problems I will think forever and do nothing. In the interim, people will think I'm an idiot ("don't you have work to do", "shouldn't you know this"). Then suddenly, whoosh, everything comes at once. I'll work for a comparatively short amount of time, code/work will just fly from my fingers, and whatever I'm working on will be excellent quality. One of my finest moments was in the process of one of these outbursts I was able to write a "one shot wonder" class that worked essentially exactly as expected without rewrites (no compilation errors or defects). This is just kind of how I operate, and it really held me back in college (decent exam scores would bail out awful homework scores) though now it's nicer in a professional/adult environment where people give you a little more leeway, freedom, and respect. Though the drawback is that it ruins metrics like burndown charts and managements' expectation of a proportional work-to-output ratio.

Brigadirk 8y ago

I share your experience. But, I've recently read a book, The Mind is Flat by Nick Chater, a psychologist, wherein he argues that your brain does not crunch anything in the background, and only does what it focuses on. However, the situation you outlined still occurs because you can get stuck in a certain paradigm (e.g. "this name that I can't remember definitely starts with 's'"), which you effectively reset, in addition to simply returning re-energised. Still a good argument for breaks and less strenuous working hours.

jack_pp 8y ago
There are times when you're not focusing on anything specific, hence why you get ideas / breakthroughs in the shower, or when looking out of the window of a train / car or just mindlessly walking, because you're not focusing on anything and your System1 can solve stuff. Though I feel that System1 can't work while System2 is focusing on other stuff like playing games or browsing social media so I don't think they're necessarily running in parallel.
jpfed 8y ago
I call this the "attractor basin hypothesis" of problem solving- your mental state is in one attractor basin and you need to be in a different one; a break gives you another chance to enter the right one. If true, it may be possible to get the same benefit as taking a break and returning to the work by doing something that jolts you out of your current attractor basin. Maybe that just means asking the right question (c.f. oblique strategies).
- Brigadirk 8y ago
  Interesting idea. I'm currently learning German, which is rather similar to my native Dutch. Yet I'm learning most of it through English, because that's simply the language people tend to use for instruction material. Every now and then when I'm doing English to German translation, I find myself puzzled and then have to remind myself "think about the Dutch word" only to then immediately understand/recall the German cognate. I'm sure someone talking to me in Dutch could have the same effect, and more broadly speaking, another 'attractor basin' may be activated by random chance, like the tired cliche of someone in a movie figuring out the 'case' as a result of their spouse or child mentioning something unrelated yet apparently analogous.
naasking 8y ago
Yes, the brain doesn't crunch anything in the background, but your brain is a powerful association engine. Sometimes an outside stimulus will activate an association that will then associate with a solution you've been looking for. This is what happens in the shower: you allow your mind to wander, aka free-associate, and suddenly new possibilities unfold.

52-6F-62 8y ago

For me that one happens very often when I'm falling asleep, in my dreams, after waking in the middle of the night, or in the early hours before I get up. Many of my more annoying problems have been solved that way. I knew an old Vietnamese refugee who was an electrical engineer working on maintaining and repairing portable stage lighting ballasts. He used to tell me how he would dream about the circuits and debug them then after spending a week of just staring dumbly at the physical thing—not accomplishing anything while at work, then come in the next day and finish inside of an hour.

asdffdsa 8y ago
My experience echoes that of the Vietnamese electrical engineer. Maybe I think much differently than others, but sometimes on difficult problems I will think forever and do nothing. In the interim, people will think I'm an idiot ("don't you have work to do", "shouldn't you know this"). Then suddenly, whoosh, everything comes at once. I'll work for a comparatively short amount of time, code/work will just fly from my fingers, and whatever I'm working on will be excellent quality. One of my finest moments was in the process of one of these outbursts I was able to write a "one shot wonder" class that worked essentially exactly as expected without rewrites (no compilation errors or defects). This is just kind of how I operate, and it really held me back in college (decent exam scores would bail out awful homework scores) though now it's nicer in a professional/adult environment where people give you a little more leeway, freedom, and respect. Though the drawback is that it ruins metrics like burndown charts and managements' expectation of a proportional work-to-output ratio.