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Welcome to another edition of T-SQL Tuesday!

This T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Wayne Sheffield ( blog | twitter ) and he has asked us to talk about

[…] a time when you ran up against your own brick wall, and how you worked it out or dealt with it.

Hitting The Wall

When stuck in a problem in the past, I could often be found glued to a keyboard and screen for many hours. I would try this way and that way, I would Google and read Stack Overflow looking for ways around the particular issue I was seeing trying different things and finally I would get frustrated and fed up and stop.

Maybe I would go and walk the dog, maybe just sit somewhere else but I would often find that I had an idea how to solve my problem and quickly go back to the keyboard frustrated that I hadnt thought about this earlier and frequently rinse and repeat.

A Different Way

It took me many years to realise this and I wish I had done so sooner but once I made the connection that leaving the problem to one side for a little while meant that I often found a way to a solution for a problem I started setting a time limit.

30 minutes

If I have been stuck on a problem for 30 minutes, I (mostly, I still sometimes fail at this) stop, take a break, go for a walk or do something different and the number of times that I arrive if not at a solution then at a path to a solution is remarkable.

Ask

The other thing to do at this point in the troublesome problem solving is to ask. Twitter, Google, Slack, Stack Overflow. These are all excellent resources where you can quickly find people who are willing and capable of helping.

Don’t be like me and take years to work this out 🙂