100%. I tend to over-engineer things more frequently than I'd like to. I'm slowly but surely getting better at catching myself sooner rather than later, but I still find it tricky.
Do you have any advice for detecting when it's better to invest some time trying to find a simpler solution? I find this especially difficult after spending weeks to come to a solution and still feeling like it's more complex than I'd like it to be.
My recommendation is to start simple and go from there, rather than the other way around. Only build what you need now. Only write the code that fixes the problem. Then optimize/refactor later if necessary and if it will be of benefit (i.e. if it's throw away code for a prototype maybe you don't need to refactor and optimize).
I recognize that some of this comes with practice and experience, so if you still feel yourself going down the rabbit hole, the first step is catching yourself! As I mentioned, timeboxing can be helpful, too. For instance, give yourself an hour to try out a new approach or to figure it out yourself before asking for help.
100%. I tend to over-engineer things more frequently than I'd like to. I'm slowly but surely getting better at catching myself sooner rather than later, but I still find it tricky.
Do you have any advice for detecting when it's better to invest some time trying to find a simpler solution? I find this especially difficult after spending weeks to come to a solution and still feeling like it's more complex than I'd like it to be.
My recommendation is to start simple and go from there, rather than the other way around. Only build what you need now. Only write the code that fixes the problem. Then optimize/refactor later if necessary and if it will be of benefit (i.e. if it's throw away code for a prototype maybe you don't need to refactor and optimize).
I recognize that some of this comes with practice and experience, so if you still feel yourself going down the rabbit hole, the first step is catching yourself! As I mentioned, timeboxing can be helpful, too. For instance, give yourself an hour to try out a new approach or to figure it out yourself before asking for help.
I also gave a talk on this very subject, which you can watch here: Shiny objects are cool, but so is building products people use