The "Just look at it" hack for problem solving
heydave.org
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Instead I jot down my struggles along with the normal notes that I maintain about the projects I'm working on. This has often lead me to realize incorrect assumptions or discover avenues that were previously missing. It also makes my notes more interesting to read.
Looking back, the first few years of notes aren't very useful to read. Almost all the benefit came from the act of writing. It took years for the muscle to develop, for me to start writing in a way that is conducive to reading and organization.
But don't try to do too much at the start. Just write, and keep writing. Keep it as simple as possible so the momentum is sustainable.
During this time the problem will fester in my mind, ideas will shape up and fall down. It's important not to get distracted, this is an active-ish process.
When you come back home (very important is to at least the room where you started) you can begin putting words down on paper, or graphs or whatever, with a possible solution. This makes your thoughts really crystalize.
After that you really do have to try it out in practice. A lot of things that look great in your mind don't end up working as well within the constraints of The Real World.
Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better." -John Carmack
People at the top of their game are usually too prone to attribute their success to hard work. People at the bottom are too prone to write it off as a question of genius.
The reality is somewhere in between: Carmack wouldn't be Carmack without a lot of hard work, but most people could never be Carmack no matter how hard they work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg
He talks of letting your mind "rest against the problem" rather than battering at it. Crucial are time and space, and a little bit of time allocated for just letting your head clear out all the day-to-day crap that's in there.
While not exactly as concrete of a plan, there's the Anthony Robbins idea of living with expectancy (ie, expect the next page you turn, door you open, person you find yourself beside to potentially "open the flood gates"). http://i.imgur.com/VE1Mg.png I've been trying this the last few weeks and while it feels good to think about, I'm finding so far that it doesn't work (for me). Maybe I rationally don't expect 'expectancy' to work...
I feel guilty about it - it's almost like being a monkey at the keyboard. "Will this push give me a pellet?"
But occasionally I do get the damn pellet . . .
And secondly you'll only get a first order solution via this method. It certainly won't be elegant. If it ps an software engineering problem there will still be a lot of engineering left.
Rich talks about how thinking about something transfers the idea from your conscious mind to your unconscious mind (your big brain) where the real horsepower is. In another talk he mentions that he has been able to spend a year doing this three times in his life: one was for Clojure, one was Datomic, and one other yet-to-be-named project.
John Cleese also talks about this in his lecture on creativity (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg).
>This past week I was faced with a difficult problem. A really difficult problem... I kept going and in another hour or two, I was getting epiphany. I had the solution to my really difficult problem.
I am happy that he solved his problem, but was it really that difficult if it could be solved in just a few hours? How long would it take him to solve the most difficult problem in his domain?
In my experience it might take as much as a week even to identify the relative difficulty level of hard problems, which tend to be refined, restated in a simplified context, expanded out to boundary cases etc. To me it seems like "just looking at it" is the very first step in a longer process.
I agree though, it takes a long time sometimes to solve really difficult problems.
I got tired of all the articles on doing something in a specific way. It's far too personal and everyone of us has the mental capacity to overcome serious problems with a solution of his own. A solution which, IMHO, can't be documented since it's just how our (individual) brain works and solves real problems.
The "Do Something in this way and you should benefit" is far too overrated, since it's one person's perspective and in no way should be taken too seriously, other than a short "advice" or a story to read before going to bed.
Therefore, I see no real value in posts like this, other than the editor's need to "let it out".
2. Anecdotes are meant to be used as grist for Bayesian updating. What I personally gleaned from this article was a slightly heightened confidence that your brain works at a certain speed whether you are pushing it to work or not, or worrying over its success or not, or whatever else--so it's better to just allow your brain to work, than put yourself in emotional turmoil over its need to find the solution. The technique itself (though see #1) isn't the important part of the article; rather, it's the knowledge found through the use of the technique--even though it was only implicitly stated!--that made the article valuable. The technique was only relevant in the way that a description of the experimental process and apparatus is relevant to a scientific paper: for rigor and replication of the original discovery.
I realised it comes out of nowhere.
Also because I never understood how people could give estimates for work that was only 1% specified.
I've always believed that I was the last person to figure this out in he world :).
[1] - for the last few days I've been trying edw519's style of work with printing out listings of source code and going somewhere away from computer to plan next day's work. So far it's working quite well.
This is a 'hack'? Looks more like common sense and avoiding procrastination to me.
I know this sounds snarky, but attributing the word 'hack' to this is just sexing up something people have been doing since forever.
On the other hand, if you look at the title of the post and the way the issue is framed:
>In fact, it was painfully difficult. And I was struck with a flood of emotions: fear, anxiety, despair, etc.
I just wanted to sleep and not deal with it.
I think it's pretty clear that what you're "hacking" isn't the task, its the anxiety. Sure, there are people out there who don't get overwhelmed by the challenges that they face.
But if you've ever spent time tutoring, you know that it is remarkable how often your charge has not presented his or herself with the facts of the matter at hand and reviewed what they already know. If you're in a frame of mind where you are procrastinating out of anxiety, telling yourself "just look at it" can lower the bar and make it possible to move forward.
Often, difficult problems are not unique, and it can be very helpful to take a look at what has been published to see if anyone has already devised an elegant solution for the class of problems you are currently trying to solve.
We'll see if staring produces a proof.
Edit: had some interesting thoughts but after 20 minutes the goldbach conjecture remains...unproven :)
Mind you, that's hard work, you might not feel inclined.