You’re playing a pickup game of basketball. Both teams are edging closer to 21 points, but you’ve been playing for half an hour already and your team has been leading at 17 for the past seven plays.
You muster up energy to go for a drive. Your foot slips at the free throw line but your euro step takes you beneath the board. You throw up the ball just to have it fumble around the rim before the other team gets the rebound.
You keep shooting the threes whenever you’re open. They’re all bricks! Your teammates do the same. Even worse, airballs!
What’s going on? I thought I was an … ok shooter? Why am I 0/7 for the past 10 minutes?
YOU’RE TIRED.
You’ve lost the focus, and with it, the skill.
It happens to the best of us, or does it? Maybe that’s what makes the best the best.
What does it mean to be as high-performing as LeBron James? No matter how tired he is, his wrist flicks just the same way it does in practice. His feet push off just as quickly. His fingers roll just as smoothly.
Once you’ve been coding for hours, you are in serious trouble. You forget all about your productive developer mantras. You enter the mud.
The same way you start the throwing the ball up because you want that three so badly, you start passing state around in whichever way you can think of to makes this thing work! You make sudden adjustments to your functions. You introduce variables without due process. You might even go rogue and plug in any internet blog post code you can find until something works! You keep moving pieces and printing values hoping the console will finally reveal the source of your troubles.
This is the point you’ve gone stupid. You’ve stepped into the mud and keep going deeper.
What people mean when they say good at problem solving is thinking critically instead of hacking away. It means having the stamina to continuously execute with good habits even when you’re mentally fatigued.
How are professional athletes able to replicate their physical movements to perfection under stress and fatigue? They just practice them. A lot
Why would development be any different?