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Comment by bitcurious | Hacker News Reader

Are you familiar with rubber duck debugging?

The idea is that when you (as a developer) run into a software bug you can't fix, you try to describe it out loud to a rubber duck. It turns out that the act of formulating these thoughts into speech is massively effective as a debugging method.

So my challenge to you is to revisit this statement:

>If they asked me what is wrong, I genuinely don't know.

Instead of shutting down because you don't know, just start speaking. Keep speaking. Deliberately turn off your filter. If that's hard, narrow the question. Instead answering "what's wrong?" answer "what's wrong today?" or "what's the strongest emotion you felt last week" or etc. And then expand around it. Describe the experience. Etc.

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RDD works because talking is really powerful. Ever had to teach a class on something you thought you knew? The act of turning an amorphous blob of 'knowledge' into a linear presentation will often show you that you didn't understand things as well as you thought. The therapist's "Tell me more" forces you to tease out of the blob the distinct threads of the issue.

Journaling can also be useful in forcing you to produce words that describe what's going on, but it's also easier to slack off when there's nobody else in the room. If you worry about what you'll say in a therapy session, start writing and you'll likely come up with plenty to talk about.

RDD works because most of the people really don’t understand what they don’t understand without a direct linear thinking about the problem. They have this blob in their head that creates an illusion of knowledge.

I have the same thing. Every time I start thinking “big” I need to consciously stop myself and ask “what do you not know?”/“what needs to be measured?” Instead of continuing making assumptions.

You don’t need to speak to a duck to do that though. Speech has got nothing to do with your ego/laziness that makes you believe there’s nothing to be done and everything can be solved by thinking.

There is probably a name for it, but I do the equivalent, except by writing an email (or just writing it down any way). I noticed that if I am saying things out loud I can just skip over what are often unnecessary details. But by writing it down in some way, I am forced to think it all through. Nine times out of ten, I solve the problem before I finish the email or ever send it.

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