Code yourself a cliffhanger

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42 points·erikpukinskis··6 comments

I've had this exact experience as well. Where everything turned out perfect, I coded, went home and went to sleep and woke up with a perfect solution and got going _right_ away.

More often than not though, this method has left me lying in bed awake for 2-3 hours of inability to sleep due to thinking about nothing but that problem.

If I could get over the sleeplessness somehow, I would do this every time!

This reminded me of the story of One Thousand and One Nights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Thousand_and_One_Nights#Syn...), where the new bride starts (but doesn't end) a story every night... ensuring the king doesn't execute her in the morning.

I think it's a great idea to do on purpose, but at the same time, it's making me less worried about actually leaving that bug outstanding when I leave the office. That is to say, I will try and take advantage of the outstanding bug, rather than worry myself about it....

In the XP glory days we used to go home leaving one failing test in the workspace so we knew where to start in the morning.

Didn't Hemingway or some other author do something like this? I really like the idea- it works.

In writing circles variants on this idea are very common advice. It can be hard to follow in the middle of flow, of course, which is why I rarely do it <_<.

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start." --Hemingway

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