But scoping, investigating, prototyping, etc are all forms of progress. Tell me that's what you're doing. In my experience, "I got nothing done" is a giant red

But scoping, investigating, prototyping, etc are all forms of progress. Tell me that's what you're doing. In my experience, "I got nothing done" is a giant red flag that the developer is actually stuck on something and not in a "I need a day or two to figure this out" way (because the developer would have said as much if that was the case).