I copied this over from last week’s post, because this is the part I’m still working on. There are pros and cons to not having marathon debugging sessions. Sometimes you lose your place and need to take more time to get back to it. On the other hand, sometimes you get a fresh perspective by getting some distance from the problem. It’s tough to try to predict which strategy will pan out. For me, there’s also a component of life balance: if I allow myself to work on this for 15 hours straight, I let it takeover my life for the day, and that can swing me into unhealthy habits. I especially need to be watchful of myself for those tendencies: I’m sure I’m not alone in loving my work so much it can get more of my time than it should. I’m also not alone in feeling the resulting burnout from never putting it down. So, especially with my current position, I’ve tried to be watchful of healthy habits, so as to make a healthy (and thereby consistently productive) research associate. So, though for this type of work, it’s tempting to not “clock out,” I think more often than not, it helps me. I put this down over the weekend and I’m already zoomed back out to the bigger picture and (hopefully) better ideas about how to debug this.