Advice for Developers: How to Keep Moving When You’re Stuck

Imagine you’ve been tasked with fixing a bug. Or you discovered an issue while implementing a feature. With no obvious solution, you ask around to see if anyone has ideas. Nobody does. Or none of their ideas work. It looks like you’re on your own.

You dive in and try everything you can think of. Hours pass with no apparent progress. Hours turn into days. The deadline is looming. You need something to show for all your effort, but nothing is working. You hate this problem and just want it to be gone. Now what?

Your reptilian brain is not going to help you here. It’s raising your stress levels, tensing your muscles, and generally making it hard to think. Taking a breath sounds trite, but it’s easy to forget when you’re under pressure. When time is running out, it seems the only course of action is to hold your breath and face the problem head-on.

And once you’ve been at it a while, simply taking a breath and trying to “clear your mind” might not be enough. Instead, try shifting your focus to something else for the moment. See if you can fill in a few squares on that crossword in the break room.

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