The Art of Debugging: Why Panic Makes Everything Worse
Stress Kills Solutions: Stay Cool, Debug Smarter
This is
- your weekly guide and shortcut to mastering emotional intelligence through the power of empathy. I talked recently about how burnout is a no-go and the ways to prevent it, before it sneaks up on you as a silent killer.
You fix a bug, and then 3 more appear.
It's like whack a mole, but without the fun of being in an arcade.
You panic. You are stressed.
How in the world did these other bugs creep in? The client is going to be pissed. Your stakeholders are going to demand answers.
You can panic, but in the end, you still have to solve it. Yes, you need the technical skills to do this, but you also need the right mindset. Your lifted emotional intelligence will be one of your best assets in thinking clearly and getting to the bottom of it.
Don't Let the Bugs Break You: Mastering the Calm Reset
I was on a project where the output product miserably failed. We were testing it, and it was buggy—buggy for us as the development team and the stakeholders who would be using it in their daily lives. We were all unhappy.
One of our internal project leads came on to a group call with the development team with a big grin and a dose of desperate positivity. He always had a layer of humility and a glass-half-full type attitude. He allowed us to talk through the laundry list of issues. Then, he reflected in silence for a moment before giving us a mindset shift.
The dozens of issues we found were really only 3 core issues from which all the bugs were branching. Get to the root, and you smash the bugs.
He exhibited brilliant emotional intelligence, especially in the form of great empathy for us. It was not his technical know-how that brought him to this conclusion. It was active listening without judgment and taking an objective approach. For us, the development team instilled our immediate self-awareness in our mindset. Our panic was making the situation worse. Our panic was a barrier to solving the bugs at hand. Calm was our friend.
With the calm setting, we solved the 3 root issues causing the dozens of bugs.
Calm is the key to problem solving. Did you know that people with increased stress levels are 37% more likely to have poor cognition?
Stop Flailing, Start Fixing: The Debugger's Game Plan
I sat for what felt like an eternity, but only 20 minutes, trying to resolve a bug in my code. I kept getting an error thrown at me. Different errors indicated progress in changing my code, but it was still not working.
I had a deadline to complete this part of the project by EOD the next day. I talked to a trusted person in my organization, who recommended that I break it down into small parts. I kept hitting a wall the remainder of the day, but the results of my code were getting less buggy.
I leveraged a self-management technique - I decided to sleep on it.
I woke up the next day with confidence, saying in my mind, "I am a brilliant coder, and I will solve this challenge today."
I went into the office, retried, and just like that, the bugs were gone. A change of mindset and engaging in several emotional intelligence techniques (sleep on it and positive self-talk) made the difference. The technical know-how was within me, but the panic was obscuring it.
No Lone Wolves Allowed: Collaboration over Isolation
I had a colleague of mine ping me, "Hey, can I call you and chat for a couple of minutes?". I was in the middle of my own stuff in deep concentration, but I knew taking the call would be right. I rarely heard from them for help, but when I did, I knew it was because they first exhausted their research options. They were tenacious in trying to resolve matters on their own. But, they knew at this point enough to dial for help.
We got on the phone to review his issue, which was that he was running into an error in Excel. He had attempted to google it but could not resolve it after a half hour. He sounded frustrated and apologetic for "bothering me."
I assured him he was not bothering me. In fact, this was a good thing that he was reaching out. Sometimes, two bright minds collaborating are smarter than one,
We resolved it. Not in 5 minutes, but 2 minutes and 23 seconds. The power of him reaching out to his network and knowing who to reach out to through his skilled relationship management over the years served him well. What could have taken an additional half-hour was solved quickly, without the stress. He did not panic - he acted.
Poof, solved - magic!
Self-Awareness first
It's human nature to feel bothered when there is an issue at hand. The first step? Leverage your self-awareness to recognize it. Do not suppress it. Feel it, and then let your logical mind kick in to solve it. When you are in a state of calm, you can think.
To get to a calm state, you can implement the pillars of your emotional intelligence.
You can chunk the myriad of issues into grouped ones to tackle them as the bigger picture. You can sleep on it. You can tell yourself you are able to solve it and convince your brain it is not as daunting. You can reach you for help and collaborate.
There is no need to panic or stress. You are more significant than the bugs at hand. You are the one with the brilliant and calm mind, ready to tackle whatever bug pops up at you.
✅ What I’ve been Analyzing this week (reading, watching, listening, etc.)
📖 I’m reading Empathy (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series) by the Harvard Business Review, Daniel Goleman, Annie McKee, and Adam Waytz. I’m learning how empathy can be leveraged for better product design.
🏛️Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, a reminder of how one individual’s commitment to empathy and justice can inspire global movements for change. If you are ever in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, consider visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park as I did last September.
✍️ I commented on a post on the
Substack about how less is more in your data visualizations.Want more on Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Elevate your career? 📈
I empower💪tech people to elevate their empathy, to accelerate their careers
Love collaboration, especially when in tech teams. I know a lot of people prefer to work alone but collaborating speed things up.
Also, thankfully, AI now helps with debugging and "managing stress" 😁
Sometimes the best debugging happens when you're not debugging! 😄
I've lost count of how many times a solution came to me in the shower, during a walk, or just by explaining the problem to a teammate.