> I don't know if this task is just an especially bad fit for me, or if my mental abilities are declining? There could be so many possibilities I'd explore bef

> I don't know if this task is just an especially bad fit for me, or if my mental abilities are declining? There could be so many possibilities I'd explore before cognitive decline (at 40??) 1. You are not communicating well enough with team lead / members to get ahead on the task. Maybe they have good advice/feedback that you're not getting because communication is off. 2. You are a bit burned out 3. You ran into some difficulty with this hard task and drove yourself into a state of panic. This panic can feed onto itself and prohibit you from making any progress in a reinforcing loop. Now you're in such anxiety you can barely focus on anything. 4. You're not attacking the problem right. Maybe you can use debug messages, or a debugger, or write diagrams, or a small POC, whatever it is you're doing now maybe you can make some adjustment on how you're trying to solve it. 5. You're not taking care of the basics - sleep, nutrition, exercise. This will basically harm you in countless ways, don't do this.