Want to Code Faster? Timebox Impediments

Confession: Last week I burned an entire morning configuring SSH key authentication on our Enterprise Github account. I tried everything I could think of, but continued to receive authentication errors. When I was finally exhausted and out of ideas, I called over a co-worker. She fixed my problem in two minutes. Seriously. Two minutes.

I knew she’d set it up SSH keys on her machine successfully just last week. Yet I struggled alone for hours. Out of arrogance. Out of fear of looking stupid. Out of pride.

Stuck? Set a timer.
Stuck? Set a timer.

I was relieved to have the issue resolved, but had an epiphany: We make this same mistake all the time. We soldier on for hours on issues that someone could help resolve in minutes…

Read on at medium.com