We've been proponents of this idea for a long time: Essentially it is that sometimes you have to at least temporarily put a hard technical problem on hold. Sometimes you need to just STOP working on the problem, put the rig on the shelf, and go out and take a walk. Or, perhaps, a hike.
In the travel section of the New York Times today, I found this phrase from Latin: "solvitur ambulando." It was in an atricle by one of my favorite authors, Paul Theroux. One of his his novels, "The London Embassy" was eerily true to life, and had me thinking that the house he described was, in fact the house in London that I was living in. Paul has been at it for so long that, frankly, I thought he was gone. I was delighted to learn that he is not, and that he is still writing books.
Theroux wrote, "Is something fuddled in your mind? Searching for an idea? Then lace your boots, leave the house, and set off alone: Chances are you wll find the answer along the way. This remedy (attributed variously to Diogenes the Cynic and St. Augustine) is one that all true piligrims know, and in many respects serious hikers are the modern embodiment of medieval pilgrims."
Indeed, if the solution is fuddled in your mind and you are searching for an idea, take a break, do something different. Take a walk: "solvitur ambulando."
I remember back when I was an IC designer and would run into a circuit problem that I would spend the whole day trying to solve - the ease of being able to fire off a SPICE simulation to try different experiments would lead to thrashing about and not being able to understand the problem at a deeper level. Many times though, at the end of a frustrating day when it was time to pack up and head home, from the time I left my desk to the time I got to my vehicle in the parking lot, I had figured out the source of the problem. Sometimes, stepping away from a problem really does help.
ReplyDeleteDavid N7WMN