Does it happen to you ?

In the process of writing/explaining/formulating the problem to ask for help in this forum you come up with a solution ?

Dear Roman

Since a joined the Xojo community thanks to them my skills with Xojo are 1000000000% better.

But this is my personal experience!

This is a variation on another problem solving technique called “The Intelligent Doorknob”
When I worked for General Dynamics years ago, I was sitting with my Business Analyst, and mentioned that I had a programming problem that I was having trouble solving.
She said, “Well explain it to me…”
I said “No offense, but I’m not sure you have the proper background to properly understand what is involved”
She said, “Probably not, but explain it to me anyways”
And about 1/2 way thru, the light went on and the problem was solved…
She was the one that coined the term “The Intelligent Doorknob”… it was the act of explaining it, NOT to whom I was talking, I could have just as well been talking to… you guessed… “a doorknob” :slight_smile:

So you just called all of us on the forum doorknobs?!?! JK. Yes that happens to me all the time. Another variant is the “shower epiphany”.

Every time.
After a week struggling with something, out comes the shower gel and … ‘Damn: I can do that with a dictionary!!’

Lets not forget the old staple… printing out your source code on a dot matrix printer with no ribbon in it.

on a WHAT??? “dot-matrix”??? “ribbon”???
Next thing you will try and convince us there was no film in your camera

I am in the process of liberating a client from their dot-matrix printer :slight_smile:

For me the epiphany is usually between waking up & throwing the alarm clock at the cat who’s yelling at me to get up.

I find that “the process of writing/explaining/formulating the problem” isn’t enough for me. I still have to post it to a forum so that everyone can see how dumb I am. About 3 seconds after posting, I figure out the answer—too late to save my self esteem.

I usually solve my problems when driving, in the bathroom or when falling asleep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

A great technique always.

Dale Carnegie suggested to write down the answers to 3 questions, before participating in end- and fruitless business meetings:

  1. What is the problem?
  2. Name at least 3 possible solutions to it
  3. Which one is your choice?

After doing this, very often one no longer needs to have meeting, one knows what to do.

I like this, because I hate “brainstorm” meetings…

I get it when I post on stackoverflow. I scratch my head for days, ask the question, then get the answer 3 minutes later. I think I’ve answered all my own questions on there.

Oddly, it doesn’t work if I haven’t spent enough time scratching my head.

I’m glad I’m not alone…

I told my wife that she’s my “Intelligent Doorknob”. Now I’m sleeping on the sofa.

I hope those are all mutually exclusive tasks…
Driving in the bathroom is awkward… and falling asleep while driving is dangerous

LOL… I told the story to my wife FIRST, then she appreciated it, and helps with these situations now

Required government multipart forms work so much better on a dot matrix (and yeah it would be nice if there was an electronic way to submit them BUT when you need actual signatures …)

[quote=273833:@Dave S]I hope those are all mutually exclusive tasks…
Driving in the bathroom is awkward… and falling asleep while driving is dangerous[/quote]

[quote]“When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.”
? Will Rogers
[/quote]

and 3 sets of intials confirming that you did in fact sign and inital the form that confirms your signature on the first form

Sounds like we share the same bureaucracy :slight_smile:
Or they swap great ideas like this