a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3245 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what do you do when you're stuck?

exercise.

Seriously. Throw on some tunes, throw on some sweats, and run/walk/whatever and cogitate on it. Then take a shower and cogitate some more. If that doesn't work, get a hip flask and draw a tub (a spa is best). Failing that, sleep on it.

The secret to writer's block is to recognize that the bulk of what you write won't really shine until you rewrite it anyway so don't be precious with it. Solve the problem and move on. And recognize that you might very well need to kill five days' worth of work with one days' revision but that the one days' revision is better than the five you're killing.





_refugee_  ·  3245 days ago  ·  link  ·  

When I was particularly unenthusiastic about a school essay I would call it "shitting on the page."

user-inactivated  ·  3245 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    the bulk of what you write won't really shine until you rewrite it anyway so don't be precious with it. Solve the problem and move on.

Interesting how this advice works for coding, too.

kleinbl00  ·  3245 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...it's almost as if coding were a creative endeavor. ;-)

user-inactivated  ·  3245 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...but... but managers and professors have told me that you shouldn't want to code because all of the creative work is in system analysis! Coders can just be outsourced to India, right??? It's just gruntwork!!

I guess that's what I get for going to college in the United States of Managers and Lawyers. I think eventually the US wants to just manage the rest of the worlds resources and people through wealth. As if we already didn't have a disconnect between employees and managers, eventually they want to push their employees out to different countries so they don't even have to know what they look like.

user-inactivated  ·  3244 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Management is insufferable everywhere, but that particular problem only happens where programming is a support role and you look like a very expensive janitor to them.

Tiger_the_Lion  ·  3245 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Your second point is where I tend to struggle. I get way too wrapped up in the idea of getting things exactly right the first time, which almost never happens.