The best way to get unstuck | Hacker News Reader

The best way to get unstuck

ggnotes.com

204 pointspmzy85 comments

I would add that gold plating, in the software engineering sense, is also a form of being stuck. You may be telling yourself you're doing useful work, like making the code prettier, or lifting test coverage up from 98%, all the way to 98.5%. But in reality, you're just buying time until taking on the next real new task. Because new tasks are scary, and require extra determination, and thus energy (and remember, you're tired!), before you have conquered them to a point of comfort, where the gold plating soon looms again. Rinse. Repeat.

what a great concept to project onto procrastination as a whole

Sometimes we do gold plating intentionally because the new tasks are stupid or will compromise the business and we’re trying to make them go away.

I think it is perfectly fine as long as it is a deliberate decision. But lines are blurry between deliberate decisions and just trying to push back the next difficult step.

Also known as "yak shaving"[0] or "bikeshedding"[1]

0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding

Nah. Yak Shaving is “I wanted to do X, but I had to do six other things before I could actually do X.”

The Wiktionary definition I linked to doesn't reflect that, it should probably be updated then.

It's definition 1 in the link you shared:

    Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing one to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows one to solve a larger problem.

It started like that, but I think it also nowadays means "an awful lot of work for very small results".

If anybody's using it like that, it's totally lost its meaning. The whole concept is that sometimes to get result A you have to a total laundry list of seemingly unrelated tasks to clear the way.

This scene[1] from Malcolm in the Middle almost illustrates it perfectly except it's more Hal getting distracted on side quests that were spawned because he tried to change a light bulb...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

Just circling back here to say thanks for the correction. The "seemingly" part is what I missed.

bikeshedding is more of a group phenomenon where trivial decisions outweigh more meaningful and difficult decisions due to the trivial decisions being easily understood.

This describes my behavior very well, and I needed this post to understand what I am doing. Thanks.

Eh, as I've learned, energy is limited. You can only do so much on one day.

If you can improve something you've been working on all day very very mildly where it costs very little energy, it's fine. Switching to the next big thing costs a lot of energy due to context switching and having to learn a new mini-domain.

It takes time, especially for someone like myself with ADHD, to adapt to a new context.

What I mostly want to get accross is that it's unnecessary to view this behavior as procrastination (negative) and not just natural, energy-efficient and expected.

For me it's the opposite: I would think like "Is it really worth my time doing this stupid work just to make it a bit better" and seek for another task that is harder but more fulfilling. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get traction on a single thing because I quickly run out of energy..

Gold plating keeps a bunch of people busy for a while. Weekly meetings, menial tasks, testing, a new feature here and there, some twiddling...just keep it up until someone decides "that'll do, pig" and everyone moves on to something else.

When I was stuck artistically a few years ago, I made a challenge to draw every day for 30 days. On my off days, I made it devilishly simple, or even a drawing of a character saying, "I'm too tired to make something good today". This project which had a heavy emphasis on imperfection and just getting things on paper turned into a comic book character that is more popular than my more "serious" art works. It was a bit of a shock and a slap to the face to realise that I wasn't necessarily helping myself by being careful with my work.

There was a web comic I used to follow, Questionable Content. Every Thanksgiving, instead of a proper comic, the guy would just post a picture of a turkey commenting on the most recent plot arc.

Other times, when he needed a 'lower effort' comic for whatever reason, he'd have the robot chatting on the internet, I assume the drawings were just copy/pasted).

A bit later, he introduced the Yelling Bird, which was similar to the turkeys, but not at Thanksgiving and quite a bit ruder. It was a way for him to not 'break the chain', without needing to always produce something at the same level as the rest of his content.

Your comment really reminded me of this, and I think you're absolutely right, giving yourself an 'out' is good if you are able to exercise enough self-control to only use it when you really need it.

Still doing turkeys: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5184

Yeah, QC kind of lost its way though I think.

I don’t know where I heard it, maybe it’s just a pithy saying, maybe it’s more profound with some history behind it. Regardless, I’ve always had success with: “Begin. The rest is easy.”

Which I guess goes along with his point, just do something.

This is super simple and a great suggestion. Then I struggled with beginning because by default I was resorting to the comfort zone, where I don't need to begin at all.

To solve it, I made myself more "vulnerable" through a few undertakings. Then beginning and doing some work everyday is the only way out to not fail.

I follow a similar mantra: "action begets motivation". You can't wait for motivation to act, because motivation comes from action. Commit to some tiny action, and motivation for the larger actions will follow.

“Begin. The rest is easy.”

It really depends what you do. Usually yes, after you just start, more ideas are coming in faster than you can implement them - but you also have to know when to stop, when you are going into a dead end.

I even consider beginning a project to be synonymous with ending it.

I put the idea down in my planner, as if one day a future version of me will know how to do it. Then, as the idea weighs on me, I think, well there is no future me, him is me! So I start thinking about how I would achieve it. Then, even by touching the first steps of setting up, before I know it it's underway.

I like to set a timer. "One hour to figure this out". Then I don't work on it for another day/week. The brain solves problems during sleep, no need for me to stress out. :)

that's excellent advice! I do that too sometimes. Somehow related: Putting a STOP-LOSS on your worries, as Dale Carnagie says in the excellent "How to stop worrying and start living"

I like to looks at problems that I am stuck on before sleep. Although I do not feel that I am thinking about them before falling asleep or while sleeping, it seems that I can solve them much easier the next time I look at them.

Yep! No effort required.

My first experience with this was with a girl in my teenage years, and we were doing some hand game that I forget now, and she's like "don't worry, tomorrow you'll know how to do it" (????)

... and that basically was my software career in a nutshell :P

I use timers aggressively for all kinds of tasks, both to nudge myself out of procrastination (I'll decide how long I want to allow, with a tacit "if I still can't make myself stop, at least make the next timer shorter"), or to overcome resistance to certain tasks by time limiting them. I find that often if I set myself a 30 minute timer for $boring_task, once I get into it I'll often then happily continue, or set another timer at least, or worst case time-limit my break from the task before getting back to it.

It's not unusual for me to have several dozens timers go off during the course of a day.

One thing a timer does is it gamifies it. This helps keep me focused. Probably same the psychology used in crappy mobile games ^_^ Sometimes I do go over, too, but I try not to. I try to have something to look forward to afterward (play with kid, do chore, eat candy, whatever)

It also increases my happiness because I'm OCD and love lists, and I'll start to assign tasks BY DAY in asana (get these done mon, these Tues, etc) and then I go nuts. But just setting time blocks and not assigning tasks to days I'm just if not more productive and happier.

This blog post resonates, and three creative prompts for doing something come to mind:

1. Roll the dice:

“In The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, authors Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber quote the late Professor Salvador Luria of the University of Illinois as praising “controlled sloppiness, which states that it often pays to do somewhat untidy experiments, provided one is aware of the element of untidiness.” In any case, the idea here is to trend toward chaos, entropy, and randomness in your work—a sense of controlled sloppiness.”

More here: https://www.holloway.com/g/creative-doing/sections/roll-the-...

2. Relinquish results:

“In his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman recalls an art class when he was instructed to draw without looking at the paper. He was impressed with the results, noticing a “funny, semi-Picasso like strength” in his work. He knew that it would be impossible to draw well without looking at the paper, so he didn’t consciously try. He writes, “I had thought that ‘loosen up’ meant ‘make sloppy drawings,’ but it really meant to relax and not worry about how the drawing is going to come out.” The solution is to do something without caring about the results.”

More here: https://www.holloway.com/g/creative-doing/sections/relinquis...

3. Treat your current work as a draft:

“Think of everything you make as a demo, a sketch, or a draft. Remove all ideas of expectations and goals, and focus simply on the process and taking a draft to a state where you declare it finished and acceptable as a working version.”

More here: https://www.holloway.com/g/creative-doing/sections/draft-dem...

Being stuck because you have too many open loops is what happened to me in the past. What helped well with this was to choose one goal for each day and declaring that the day is a success if that one task or goal can be checked off.

yes, excellent point. Might be relevant: https://ggnotes.com/progress-is-a-journey

I had a math teacher in a proofs class that always said, "the answer isn't on the ceiling or out the window; look at your paper and just write whatever you can think of. Either you'll think of something, or you'll show me that at least you know something."

I’d hate that teacher. Sad to see instructors not being aware that people focus in different ways. If anything, I thought that “looking into the distance” was the default way to focus? I’m literally looking at my window while thinking what to write in this comment.

In the context of this article and GP post I think the teacher trying to coach students that the act of trying something/anything has the probability of the solution snowballing out of your head. But often students give up before trying and it's a marker's nightmare.

I've seen many people hand in a totally empty answer sheet (something I've also been guilty of in the past). During one of my organic chemistry exams, I saw another student break down because a lot of the questions were unconventional and I could hear the very kind invigilator trying to encourage them mid exam "if you don't try something you can't get more than zero".

I read another examiner report for a notoriously hard physical chemistry paper that it was too hard to fit examinees to a curve because there were too many blank answers and the marks were too low.

Yeah, the point was, if you're totally stuck, then throw stuff at the wall and maybe you'll notice a pattern, or it'll jog your memory, anything is better than nothing.

Your comment triggered long buried memories of organic chemistry, which ultimately made me change my major from biology to math. Thanks!

I had a teacher who promulgated the same technique for what we called Calc III (similar to a proofs class, I imagine; Spiwak was the text). It was very effective.

This is why I try to stop when things are "unfinished", leave a note for myself, and pick things up from an easy starting point later.

Another way I "get unstuck" is a heavy dose of mushrooms and a long walk in a forest. But that might not be for everyone ;) And it's more of a 1-2x/year type thing.

walking/shower/not looking to any screen has the same effect to me

A long walk in the forest does wonders in our current state of affairs. At least for me. It’s so easy to fill your time while stuck with endless distractions. Detaching from those distractions, sometimes physically leaving connectivity, is the only way I can find a way out.

After a long walk in the forrest, all I want to do is sleep for 12 hours and not do anything. It often has a negative impact on my productivity.

This is probably the best trick I learned. It’s much easier to come back to a task that I left unfinished, maybe with a comment saying what’s next.

When I’m really done with something and then come back later, it feels like starting from zero.

Learning to put work away for easier re-engagement is the exact thing I am determined to improve this year.

I prefer first thinking to immediately doing something. Especially in programming one can easily create an even bigger mess by picking a wrong direction. I tend to think about what the steps were that got me to the place where I got stuck and whether these make sense then I think about different solutions and then pick one. Also, I cannot think deeply with other people in the room. I have to find a room where I can be alone. If I want to think when at home I go lie on the bed with a stack of blank paper and a pen and sketch some diagrams and that kind of stuff.

Related recommendation: The War of Art https://stevenpressfield.com/books/the-war-of-art/

I immediately thought of this book too. For the comment section readers: The War of Art is a book about Pressfields idea of 'resistance', a force the artist/maker must overcome in just about any important (to them) creative endeavour.

At the risk of being overly negative (but in the interest of possibly saving someone else some time), this may be one of the three worst books I've ever read. I am not exaggerating – I keep a list of every book I read, and it's at the bottom.

If all you need is a barely-sensible motivational speech, go for it. Otherwise, don't waste your time.

I don't use goodreads, but went looking for reviews to see if I was crazy, or if I was missing something, or if it really was as terrible as I thought. These selected reviews sum it up better than I could have:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/55761871

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/732294700

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/735909209

The reviews seem fairly polarized overall, so maybe the book really does help people. At the very least, I encourage you to read some of them before picking up the book.

If the positive reviews seem like they come from people you'd agree with, then by all means, go for it. Otherwise, stay away.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1319.The_War_of_Art

Those reviews are amazing! I wouldn’t have imagined such vitriolic responses to what I recall as a fairly lightweight work, and I’m glad you posted them. I guess I need it read it again, because I don’t remember the bits about Hitler and erections.

Yeah, when I found those reviews, I felt so validated. I had also missed those bits you mention, but even without noting them, I came away with a really negative impression of the book based on its (in my opinion) condescending tone and lack of substance.

I truly had mixed feelings about replying so negatively to your original comment, but I felt it was important to highlight that even though the book is the kick in the ass some people need to get motivated, it can just as easily be an irritating waste of time for others. To each their own, I suppose!

I agree. Because it is recommended so often I kept reading it through to the end in the hope that I would find something useful. I never did.

OP here, I've read this book a while back. Now I'm thinking that it might (among other things) have very well influenced this blog post :)

Or try using a local LLM as a rubber ducky - that's been working pretty well for me lately.

Which one do you use? Llama (1/2) and ChatGPT 3.5 are the ones I've tested so far and they're both kind of terrible at logic.

ChatGPT 4 is vastly superior to ChatGPT 3.5 in my experience, although it still fails at logic sometimes.

Mixtral 8x7B. Short of that (high ram requirements), I've also found Mistral v0.2 to be pretty solid for a 7b model.

YMMV though - it's going to depend on your use cases.

Do you have instructions and RAM requirements for running that model? Llama.cpp?

I just use Ollama[1] - makes it incredibly easy to get going on MacOS, and can be run on linux/WSL also. RAM required will depend, but generally to run Mixtral at reasonable quantization levels (e.g. Q4) you're going to want 36GB or more.

[1] https://github.com/jmorganca/ollama

> as a rubber ducky

What do you mean? What do you type into it to get unstuck?

Same way you'd bounce an idea or situation off a knowledgable colleague when you're stuck. Concise summary of the problem, the desired outcome, and finish the prompt with something to the tune of '[what are/walk me through] some ways I could [do/get around/prevent] this'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

You can do this with ELIZA[1]. Since the benefit is you don't need to submit the question.

[1]https://web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/eliza.html

I sometimes ask my son to come to my computer and try to explain what I am trying to solve. He is in high school and understands the basic idea of what I am explaining to him. Usually, while explaining, I find the solution.

Now that we’re sharing, I recommend vacuum cleaning. It gets me unstuck and has this weird side effect that it cleans the house.

I don't know if it gets me "unstuck" per se, but I'll second the notion of cleaning or doing other menial, "mindless" tasks in really pretty much any situation where you struggle with mental work. Not just if stuck, but if just tired and sluggish etc. as well.

A bonus for me at least is that when I'm too mentally tired to focus effectively enough on work or mentally taxing hobbies, my mind is also far less likely to rebel against the idea of doing house work...

One of the things at Rootly I started doing is helping everyone identify what are the little habits you can do daily that equate to "making the bed". This helps find the wins that help kick start momentum.

For me as the CEO, I try to Slack Huddle at least 2 new people I haven't spoken to in a long time just to see how they are doing a day. I often do this when I am walking my dog or commuting to work. This always gets me in a productive groove.

> I often do this when I am walking my dog or commuting to work.

Do you make it clear to folks you are doing other things while speaking to them? Have you had anyone give you feedback that you are distracted?

Yup! I told the team at our all-hands I started doing this and usually while I am in motion. So far only positive feedback. I've also been able to get ahead of a few silos that were building at our business too. Fun way to get to know people on a more personal level.

Explore is the keyword I think. When you are stuck is when you are free to explore. Since there is no 'lead', you can go anywhere. The temptation is to go back into the places you've been before, the rut. But if you keep doing new things, or 'vitamin new' as i call it, new leads will appear.

This article definitely resonates. I've found that the best cure to inertia is to start doing things, even if they seem completely unrelated to my work or end goal. Just incorporating simple habits like exercise into my daily routine help put me in the right mindset and generate the sense of momentum.

I'm not stuck but nothing is moving. As an inventor I just keep building but the silence can be deafening sometimes.

I’ve wondered if stuckness sometimes just means you need a break, like you’ve worn your brain to fatigue? I work pro bono doing game dev and after 3 months i just couldn’t do any work at all. About a month later I came back and could do it again. If I kept trying to work before I stopped it just felt like unbearable mental stress. Since coming back a month later it is only mild stress. How could people just work nonstop all year? I don’t understand it.

Surely it’s just like a similar process to lactic acid buildup but in the regions of the brain you’re most heavily using, right?

I think if the challenges are just at the right level and the work is interesting to you, you can work almost as long as you want. But if the difficulty level is too high and you feel no sxcitement, it becomes stressful and and eventually you reach a point when you cannot go on. I had this with a project that was difficult and that I found not interesting at the same time. I could not go on. I would rather browse amazon or clean the livingroom all day than stting down to work on the project. I felt really miserable for this.

Well in my case the work isn’t too hard and I find it interesting. So your description does not seem to apply.

Robert Pirsig spends a good number of pages discussing stuckness and what he calls gumption traps, I think that part of the book may be interesting (and perhaps even useful; it was to me) for people who found TFA interesting.

Fun: I'm very tired and initially read "do nothing", which I interpreted as "problems tend to disappear with time".

What the article actually says is probably better advice.

haha. Good idea, I might steel this theme for the next post ;) Joke aside, I have problems doing "nothing," and I believe that doing nothing can increase anxiety when you feel stuck.

just move around

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fi6xco5UUAAYbqJ.jpg

Do something!

I even find doing completely useless/worthless things like posting on social media can get the blood flowing and get out of stuckness.

But there's an afternoon cutoff. If you were to actually work fully for your 9 hour shift. Like absolutely crush it, you're going to be exhausted to the point that your life suffers. This is 'living to work'. Dont do that.

In my case, i will try to change the input instead of messing again with the solution.

Refactoring the input is such an underrated life hack.

Can you give an example?

You can say: if your function is a mess, or you got stuck, try changing the arguments ?

Another HN commenter the other day suggested baby pomodoro to take the first step. Minute on, three off. Then two minutes on. Stretch it out longer and longer.

How do people write this stuff and not feel ashamed Meaningless drivel.

“How do I stop being depressed? Lol just stop being sad” wow so helpful!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com