I can’t do it
This’ll be a short one, primarily meant as a brain dump.
I ran face-first into a meta-issue yesterday. The language was JavaScript, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I couldn’t do what I was trying to do, and the by-now extremely familiar sensation of code rage had started. On top of that, I’d managed to pile a rising sense of panic that I was getting behind. The two were tightly coupled, so the longer I stared at the screen the greater my panic got, which then flowed into “I’m getting behind because I can’t do it” >> “Because I can’t do it I’m getting behind”.
Down the spiral went.
Panic is not productive, and neither is staring at a screen. Action is productive, and action necessarily requires a plan. A plan requires knowing what to research, and knowing what to research comes out of assertively naming whatever it is you can’t do.
The plan going forward is this:
1.) Smack into a problem.
2.) Pull the problem apart; you’re looking for something along the lines of “I can’t do <problem>” or “I don’t understand <issue>”.
3.) Mount your horse and head off into the internet, or go through your notes/previous learning materials, making direct use of whatever went in those angle brackets above.
4.) If the resource you find contains sub-issues that you also don’t understand, resolve those gaps. You might find that you head off down a rabbit hole of learning, one that you need to follow all the way to the bottom. With your newly-gained knowledge, return up the tree until your in your problem’s route.
5.) Apply what you should now understand.
Bear in mind that this process is recursive, so you might hit step 5 and find that it still doesn’t solve things. Identify a new issue, and start back at the top. Cycle until problem != problem.
It might be worth recording the issue in a document or notes app, closing it with a fix that you write to future self should you forget how you dealt with it.
Absolutely anything is better than staring at a screen raging out. Literally anything.
