Survey time!

1. What is your experience level in your career? (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)

2. Have you gotten stuck on a problem recently? (Yes, No)

Survey time!

#1. What is your experience level in your career? (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced)

Survey time!

#2. Have you gotten stuck on a problem recently? (Yes, No)

It may feel frustrating and like you’re doing it wrong, but that is the practice.

Will Doenlen, "To start meditating, stop trying to empty your mind"

Getting stuck isn't a reflection of your skill level

Getting stuck isn't an impediment preventing you from doing the job

Getting stuck

IS THE JOB.

Your job is to

solve problems

Solving problems takes time

Write about the problem

Email

Slack

StackOverflow

Blog post

Journal

GitHub issue

#dev-help

Talk to a person

Pair with a person

Why do these work?

Protege Effect

The best way to learn or understand something is to teach it.

Inspires you to learn the topic thoroughly

Inspires you to think about how you'd learn the topic

Control: Learn these things

Experiment: Learn these things, then teach them

Muis, Krista, et al. "Learning by preparing to teach: Fostering self-regulatory processes and achievement during complex mathematics problem solving."

...students in the learning by preparing to teach intervention developed a more detailed and better-organized concept map of the problem...

Muis, Krista, et al. "Learning by preparing to teach: Fostering self-regulatory processes and achievement during complex mathematics problem solving."

...learning by preparing to teach...

Muis, Krista, et al. "Learning by preparing to teach: Fostering self-regulatory processes and achievement during complex mathematics problem solving."

"Experience this one thing for what it is, not what you think it is."

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Intervention", 1997

Draw what you see, not what you THINK you see

Risk analysis

What is the thing I've introduced that I know the least about?

What is the thing most likely for me to improperly use?

What is the thing I'm making the most assumptions about?

Remove code

Build a proof of concept

Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.

Mark Twain

Write tests!

Relax

Physical exercise

Other hobbies

Move on to another problem

Why do these work?

1. Escaping can boost your confidence

2. When you come back to the original problem, you have to re-learn it a bit

3. Your brain might come up with the answer while thinking about other things

Analogical problem solving

Incubation

5 Stages of Creativity

1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Evaluation
5. Elaboration

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Intervention", 1997

...ideas churn around below the threshold of consciousness. It is during this time that unusual connections are likely to be made.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Intervention", 1997

When we intend to solve a problem consciously, we process information in a linear, logical fashion. But when ideas call to each other on their own, without our leading them down a straight and narrow path, unexpected combinations may come into being.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, "Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Intervention", 1997

Getting stuck IS THE JOB

Learn new ways to solve problems

You're doing a great job!

❤️🤗️❤️🤗️❤️🤗️❤️🤗️❤️

Keep a journal

Exercise

Meditation

Talk about your struggles

0. Embrace: Getting Unstuck Is The Job

1. Explain: Challenge Assumptions

2. Isolate: Break Problems Down

3. Escape: Set It Aside

4. Harden: Condition Yourself