Not Working is Helpful

I had the experience often that working longer on a hard problem results in diminishing returns. Only because I tried 6 hours instead of 3 to solve a problem does not necessarily mean I solved the problem in an efficient time. My time could be better used when I solved two hard problems in the same time I solved one.

But what does this self straw men argument even mean?

Often times when I have a hard problem and simply work on it sometime and go to sleep in the next morning its like my third eye was opened. The solution seemed so obvious and simple why didn’t I saw it sooner?

We need to take breaks, need to see things a bit differently, and it greatly helps to do something else.