This is related to technology and developing applications, you’ll just have to bear with me a moment.
My 5 year old son has a book, May I Please Have a Cookie?, in which Alfie sees his mom making cookies and wants one. At first, he just grabs one, but mom says no, and tells him to “think of a better way, Alfie”. He tries to steal one with a fish hook. “Think of another way, Alfie”. He dresses up like a grown up. “Think of a better way, Alfie”. The point of the story, of course, is that he just needs to be polite and nicely ask for a cookie. When he does, his mom hands him one. Easy enough once he figured it out. But impossibly hard and frustrating until then.
Sound familiar? If you’re anything like me, this could describe developing applications. You sit there, trying loads and loads of ridiculous ways to accomplish something with code. Once you think of the “correct” answer, it is easy. So obvious. Sitting there all along. And so easy to accomplish once you know how.
Worse than that, is when I am coding, I don’t have “mom” to tell me to try another way. I will sometimes sit there with my fishing pole for DAYS and wonder why I can’t just have a damn cookie.
In a roundabout way, I’ve blogged about this before, hey maybe one of these days it will stick. I need to “think of another way” sooner. When something just isn’t working, I need to stop and ask for help, or stop and try another way. Maybe I should get a timer that every couple of hours just says “Think of another way, Alfie”.