Discussion on:

Take a break for productivity's sake

... things. But that doesn't seem to help as much.

Do you actually do any PHP work professoinally?

But I try to avoid it for the future.

The more you push it, the less progress you will make.
You know I'm talking about the long-eared variety, yes?
Otherwise, get your mind out of the gutter!

Though maybe I get stuck on easier things than you, but I find if I relearn what I did previously, I tend to look at it differently and that difference is what brings me to my solution.

My brother, who works as a general handyman, inventor, diesel fitter and various other thing for a large farmer also does this when he's working on something tricky. He has a chair set out at the back of his workshop, and when he has a problem, grabs a coffee, sits in the chair and cogitates.

His boss now knows that if he's going to interrupt my brother, the worst possible time is not when he's waste deep inside some machine, but when he's on his thinking chair!

I agree walks are good not just because you hit a wall on a problem, but because it's been 2 or 3 hours since you got off your butt--for no other reason but to stay healthy. And I find that something wonderful happens when I do aerobic exercises: the answers start coming. Must be something about all that blood rushing around faster in my body--some of it flows into my brain.

Whenever I am stymied at a client site, or need to solve an intractable problem, go to the local diner (as road consultants we know where the good ones are) and sit down. Have a sandwich, coffee, read a paper. Anything to take the mind OFF of the hell it is working on and, very often, an IDEA will surface during the break time. I also have thought up solutions while sleeping. 2am can be a time when the mind suddenly works and solves a problem overnight and I wake up refreshed and EAGER to try out my idea. Even in corporate, when I was with Aon Group, we would take a coffee break. That alone probably saved my life when I was in the World Trade Center and we would also go down to the lobby where the food court was and have something to eat. So it was no big deal to go down there during the day and chow down, no big deal on September 11 either. See, it does work.

...that I have not been able to solve by taking a long walk.

Occupational Therapists say that you should only work for 45 minutes at the computer and then take a 15 minute break. Their reasoning is related to the physical strain of sitting and staring. However, it applies to the mental strain as well.

Glen Ford
http://www.vproz.ca