Sometimes when you have spent all day working on something and you haven’t managed to get anywhere, it’s time to give up. Not permanently, after all you still want to get it done. But temporarily. Just to catch your breath and come back fresh.

Yesterday, I spent all day working on a project. And for most of the day, I was stuck on a small section of the code. At most 20 lines of code. But I couldn’t find what was wrong with it. No matter what I tried it wouldn’t work. I went over and over the same little section of code. But no matter how many times I looked at it, it still looked right to me.

So I decided that the problem must be data related. I re-worked and went over every step of code leading up to the function that didn’t work. Followed the data through the entire chain. I even rewrote some of it to make it a little more efficient and to ensure that I wasn’t corrupting the data. Nothing. The same function still didn’t work. At about 5:15, I decided to give up for the day. I had spent all day working, but I really hadn’t accomplished much of anything.

I headed home for a much needed break and some dinner. I can tell you I was really frustrated and extraordinarily tired from beating my head against this issue all day. But as I was driving home, a possible solution occurred to me. I dismissed it as too simple, but still kept it in the back of my mind. Slept on it, and when I got up this morning, it still seemed like a good idea. It was only a small change, and it was in the function I had originally thought it was in. So I tried it. And it worked!

I had spent all day yesterday working on this issue and had gotten nowhere. But when I finally gave up and went home for the day, the answer came to me. All I needed was to take a break. Sometimes when you feel like you are getting nowhere, it’s just time to take a break.