How do you approach hard problems / the problem solving process?

[colrdavidson]

I see this as an interesting "war stories about nasty bugs" talk, ala Cantrill's A Hurricane's Butterfly, with leads into making better tools / interfaces for hard situations.

I'd love to hear community thoughts on how we all tackle the hard stuff. It's incredibly helpful to humanize the software dev process, everybody has to fight a hard problem or two sometimes.

• How do you fight the fight/flight process and break down hard problems into chunks?
• What kinds of tools do you reach for / write when you're stuck?
• How do you clear your headspace so that you can approach these issues?
• Examples of hard problems that you've solved, talking about the ups and downs of the process, and how you pushed through them
• What tools don't exist but should for making the hard stuff tractable?
• How do you design interfaces to make the hard stuff obvious?