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I advocate a twenty minute rule. It's not hard and fast, but shouldn't be more than an hour, and shouldn't be less than 20 minutes. This is the amount of time

I advocate a twenty minute rule. It's not hard and fast, but shouldn't be more than an hour, and shouldn't be less than 20 minutes. This is the amount of time the person needing help should try to solve it themselves. After that they should write down what they've done (they should be doing this anyway in an engineering notebook or worklog file), and then ask for help. The delay is to make sure an attempt is made to solve it themselves. It's long enough to get them to try to understand the problem, and short enough to not put them far behind. I've also found that if they need to get help often then it's not their problem, but the problem of who is tasking them. Their tasking, or the context of that tasking, is probably not being communicated well, or might not be defined well-enough.

dmlittle 6y ago
I personally like advocating after 20 minutes of being stuck and unable to progress any further. If you're stuck but keep making incremental progress, reset the timer. It might seem silly but if you're able to make slow incremental progress you'll eventually figure it out and it helps grow your intuition of what to do to fix/unstuck yourself. I don't know of any other way to develop that intuition other than going through it yourself (if you have any tips I'd love to hear your thoughts!). Yes, it might be slow at first but the compounding effect on your growth cannot be overstated. It's also not a hard rule, if you're on some sort of time crunch and need help you should obviously feel free to ask for it.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  Thank you, I should have added that as I do the same thing. It's 20m (or whatever the interval is between 20m and an hour) or being stuck, not of making progress.
- muttled 6y ago
  I can personally attest to this. I've been in a couple positions where there was simply nobody to ask. If you were stuck, you were stuck. It was awful for obvious reasons but my ability to self-resolve skyrocketed.

dmlittle 6y ago

I personally like advocating after 20 minutes of being stuck and unable to progress any further. If you're stuck but keep making incremental progress, reset the timer. It might seem silly but if you're able to make slow incremental progress you'll eventually figure it out and it helps grow your intuition of what to do to fix/unstuck yourself. I don't know of any other way to develop that intuition other than going through it yourself (if you have any tips I'd love to hear your thoughts!). Yes, it might be slow at first but the compounding effect on your growth cannot be overstated. It's also not a hard rule, if you're on some sort of time crunch and need help you should obviously feel free to ask for it.

Communitivity 6y ago
Thank you, I should have added that as I do the same thing. It's 20m (or whatever the interval is between 20m and an hour) or being stuck, not of making progress.
muttled 6y ago
I can personally attest to this. I've been in a couple positions where there was simply nobody to ask. If you were stuck, you were stuck. It was awful for obvious reasons but my ability to self-resolve skyrocketed.