Have you ever heard that expression before? When you can’t see the woods for the tree’s.
It refers to being too close or involved with a situation to see it clearly or have clarity. The reason I wanted to write about this is because I have often being in this situation. There are times when you can get stuck on a problem and unless you walk away from it you’ll struggle to get enough clarity to “SOLVE” it.
Owning my own software and online marketing business means that I do some “Programming” from time to time. I don’t need to do this myself but I LIKE to keep my hand in it because I enjoy it SO much. I enjoy it like a hobby.
However, there have been countless times when I have been stuck on a coding problem. I have found myself engrossed in a problem for hours, tweaking and testing and going over the same bit of code over and over again. It’s frustrating as I always felt really close to solving these issues BUT never did until a number of hours had passed. That’s time wasted that I’ll never get back.
On one occasion I had such a problem and spent around 6 hours trying to resolve it with ZERO success. I got angry and frustrated and after a number of attempts I decided to leave my machine and go on a long walk with my dog. It was a nice sunny day and after about 5 minutes of walking along a quiet walkway my frustration started to subside. My thoughts became clearer. I started to ponder on my issue again but this time I wasn’t at my machine with my brain running at 100mph. I was out walking taking deep breaths and enjoying a more relaxed environment. Suddenly I came up with the “Solution”. It almost drifted into place and I knew exactly WHERE I was going wrong and how I could most likely fix it. I got back home about 30 minutes later, applied my solution and it solved my problem.
From that day it made me realize something. If you are having a problem working something out or you can’t seem to “Get your head around” a situation then remove yourself from that environment and put your mind in a more relaxed state. You can’t solve problems when your mind is clogged up and frustrated. Your brain works much better when you de-clutter it and take yourself away from the problem!
I hope that you enjoyed this post and got something valuable from it. These photo’s were taken on “one” of my dog walks. It’s amazing the ideas and solutions that I come up with when I venture out on these walks with my dog.