I talk to other people and tell them about my problem. It doesn't matter if they're a domain expert. The act of explaining the problem frequently causes me to

I talk to other people and tell them about my problem. It doesn't matter if they're a domain expert. The act of explaining the problem frequently causes me to see it from another angle and sometimes that's all it takes to get things going. It's the "stuffed animal helpdesk" effect. I've been on both sides of this. Sometimes people talk to me just to get another take on things and they wind up finding it just by explaining it. Once in a while, I end up making a guess based on general knowledge and wind up being helpful anyway. I got this idea from reading Usenet way back, and wrote about it more recently: http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/06/14/crash/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/06/14/crash/