I usually do something akin to “rubber ducking.” I don’t necessarily write it down, but I say it, out loud, in complete and coherent sentences as if talking to a real person. Disciplining myself to do that causes me to put things in explicit, sensible order, and if I try to put things in order and find that I can’t, that’s a good flag that I need to clear up some sort of confusion.
Often I do this with some kind of currency exchange—like, I’ll try to quantify both the additional information and the time and effort I’m spending on it in a common unit so that it’s not hard to do comparisons.
I usually do something akin to “rubber ducking.” I don’t necessarily write it down, but I say it, out loud, in complete and coherent sentences as if talking to a real person. Disciplining myself to do that causes me to put things in explicit, sensible order, and if I try to put things in order and find that I can’t, that’s a good flag that I need to clear up some sort of confusion.
Often I do this with some kind of currency exchange—like, I’ll try to quantify both the additional information and the time and effort I’m spending on it in a common unit so that it’s not hard to do comparisons.