Ron Jeffries is currently publishing another great series of ‘diary’ articles, this time in which he and Chet Hendrickson tackle a serious project the way they would advise their clients to tackle it. The results are as entertaining and informative as usual. Yesterday I sent Ron a note about the way he accounts for his and Chet’s time on the project; read his reply in Shooting Oneself in the Brain…

Wow – I never expected such an in-depth response! I definitely agree that working full-time on a problem isn’t the most effective way to make progress on it. And as a side thought, I wonder if the extra thinking time is one of the benefits of “slack”; that is, if we have a somewhat smaller load than our capacity, does our subconscious make use of that time to help us be more effective?