I was lazily walking home from the dentist’s today, reading this post and mulling over a technical problem. I had had a few good ideas, but nothing I felt was sufficient. I made myself an ultimatum: “find a tractable solution in 5 minutes or someone you care about dies”.1 Lo and behold, I had a good answer within 2 minutes, after having thought about it idly for two hours.
1 Probably too extreme for many people, but it worked for me; I was able to put myself in that situation and confident that I wouldn’t suffer mental harm from doing so. Please, don’t do this if you don’t think the results would be good for you and your situation.
I was lazily walking home from the dentist’s today, reading this post and mulling over a technical problem. I had had a few good ideas, but nothing I felt was sufficient. I made myself an ultimatum: “find a tractable solution in 5 minutes or someone you care about dies”.1 Lo and behold, I had a good answer within 2 minutes, after having thought about it idly for two hours.
1 Probably too extreme for many people, but it worked for me; I was able to put myself in that situation and confident that I wouldn’t suffer mental harm from doing so. Please, don’t do this if you don’t think the results would be good for you and your situation.