| Many problems are difficult to solve. This is usually due to the person Not Accepting the Problem. When I hear someone say, "It should work," I know it will be difficult for that person to solve their problem. I write software for a living. And over time I've learned that if your code's not working then you've made a mistake. There's nothing wrong with making a mistake if you're human, but not if you're a God. If something's not working you haven't told the computer to do what you want it to do. I recently had a problem, where I was getting a security error. I thought, "This should work." But I checked my work and found that the system was using a different database than I thought. I fixed the code and the problem was fixed. If the code you wrote "should work," why would you look for a bug. Once you switch your mindset to "problem acceptance," most can be solved pretty quickly. Whenever I hear someone saying “It should work,” I know they'll have a problem solving the issue. The key to solving a problem is to assume you've made a mistake. You're human and humans make mistakes. If you think you didn’t, you won’t look very hard for the solution. If you think you did, you’ll look more carefully. Today it is easier than ever to find out what’s causing an issue because thousands of people like you have already made the mistake and posted it to a website that Mr. Google knows about. But, Google doesn’t always have the answer. More experienced users will know right away what is causing the mistake. This is because they had the mistake, fought with it and found the solution. The next time it appears, their mind is aware that this issue can occur. So what do you do if you have a problem? The first step is to look for something that looks different. This is where your intuition kicks in. What’s new? What haven’t you done before? What’s changed? This will often point you to the cause of the problem. But if that doesn’t work, then you need to simplify until you have something that works then add back things until you identified the problem. Just remember you did something wrong, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Just keep looking until you find the solution. Just reading this book won’t teach you to solve problems. You’ll have to suffer a bit by solving problems. |