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Love this. If I had one to add, don't be afraid to go back to a previous idea with a fresh perspective. I spent several months researching a similarity techniq

Love this. If I had one to add, don't be afraid to go back to a previous idea with a fresh perspective. I spent several months researching a similarity technique. After making no headway, and realizing that a "crutch" was doing all the work, I dropped the first idea to pursue the crutch exclusively. After many more months, I realized that crutch would not work after all, and was depressed. But then I had a different idea about the original technique. I went back to that, applied the new twist, and eureka! It is like those old coyote road runner cartoons. The frustrating thing about the coyote was that he never went back and fixed tiny problems with his attempts, instead he dropped every nearly-successful attempt and moved on to something completely different, just to find that it had different bugs in it.

busyant 7y ago
> After many more months, I realized that crutch would not work after all, and was depressed. But then I had a different idea about the original technique. I went back to that, applied the new twist, and eureka! This sounds like it's worthy of a blog post in and of itself. Also, the road runner/coyote analogy is superb.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
> It is like those old coyote road runner cartoons. The frustrating thing about the coyote was that he never went back and fixed tiny problems with his attempts, instead he dropped every nearly-successful attempt and moved on to something completely different, just to find that it had different bugs in it. I've heard the same thing about GI Joe. COBRA had working weather satellites---why didn't they just try again in next weeks episode?!