A challenge that a lot of people fall into is what we could call the “banging your head against the wall” problem. You’re given something complex to do, so what do you do? You Google, and Google and Google, try this and try that, and nothing seems to work. For all you try, you end up banging your head against the wall… and have nothing to show for it. It’s a lose-lose situation in every aspect.
Sometimes this does happen. The way you grow and learn is by solving complex problems that are slightly above your head. If you never get into tough situations, you’re not growing, and if you say you solve every tough situation perfectly, I wouldn’t believe you.
This is only a negative situation if you ultimately don’t solve the problem. Sometimes you will and sometimes you won’t. However, this leads to a bigger risk, what if you can’t solve it but, not realizing that and you go on and on and on trying to fix it even though, ultimately, you won’t be able to?
This problem is far too common, and I have one rule of thumb I use to prevent it: I give myself a time-limit to solve each problem, and I define that time-limit before I start. If I can’t solve it when the clock hits the limit, then I go and ask for help. That number is 60 minutes 90% of the time.
I developed this rule of thumb because I’ve found, that while I may not be able to solve most problems in an hour (some problems are just complex and require a lot of time), I always know if I’ll be able to solve them or not.
If after an hour, I find myself Googling obscure forum posts from 1998 and implementing each piece of advice keeps giving me the same error, that strategy will never work. But if, after an hour, the forum posts lead to solving this problem which then uncovered another one—ah—progress! I may not know the answer but the forward progress is clear.
In general, there’s an old cliché that is often forgotten but really important: “when you’re stuck in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging.” This is an important and sadly mostly forgotten point because of its subtle profundity, you don’t realize you need to stop digging because you don’t even realize you’re stuck in a hole.
