The Blank Debugger Effect

When you're solving a lot of problems at once, and you're about to finish for the day, don't walk away after you finally fixed that one issue that's been driving you crazy. Instead, find the next issue, spend about a minute solving it, and then walk away. That way, you don't have to think about the bug you just fixed tomorrow and your workspace is already set up for you.


It also gives a kind of continuous feeling to the whole thing, instead of "Whew! Just finished that one. Hope there aren't any more." only to inevitably to disappointed by yet more problems. The additional effort it takes to do this is zero, since it's just changing when a task is done. The benefit is largest when there are multiple days between when you can work on the tasks.

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