I usually write here about Next.js, caching, and the bugs that steal your sleep. But this post is different. I want to share what happens before I write any of that code. The thing that has changed how I think about all of it.
Some developers go for a walk when they are stuck. Some make another cup of coffee. Some keep staring at the same file, convinced the answer is hiding somewhere between two lines of code. I usually go to my garden. Not because I am trying to escape the bug. Because I have learned that some problems become clearer the moment I stop trying so hard to solve them.
That was not something I planned. It happened slowly, the way most true things do. Over the past year, gardening quietly became part of my daily routine. Every morning before I open my laptop, I spend a little time with my plants. Sometimes I am watering them. Sometimes I am adding homemade compost. Sometimes I am just standing there, looking at what has changed since yesterday. It does not sound like work. But in many ways it prepares me for the work that is about to begin.
Yesterday evening, I was stuck. I mean properly stuck. The kind of stuck that sits heavy in your chest. A caching issue that did not quite make sense. Nothing was broken in an obvious way. The application worked. The data loaded. Most things behaved exactly as expected. Except one small detail. A page kept showing stale data long after it should have updated. I checked the obvious places first. Then I checked them again. I read the documentation. I followed the request flow. I looked at every cache boundary I could think of. Everything looked reasonable. When that happens, I have learned not to panic. If I am not making progress anymore, forcing myself to stare at the screen rarely helps. So I closed my laptop. Not because I was giving up. Just because I knew I needed a different perspective.
This morning, I did not open my editor. I climbed the stairs to my terrace instead.
The terrace was still damp from the night before. Rain always changes how the soil smells. The whole place felt softer, quieter, like the world had turned down its volume. I started checking my plants one by one. A tomato plant had grown taller overnight. The bottle gourd vine had reached another section of its support. A rain lily had quietly opened after the night's shower. None of these things happened quickly. They happened because nature keeps working even when nobody is watching. While turning the compost, my mind was not thinking about caching anymore. It was thinking about nothing in particular. And that is usually when interesting things happen. Without forcing it, I suddenly remembered one assumption I had made earlier. I had been looking at where fresh data entered the system. I had not looked closely enough at where the old data was still being reused. I saw it then. I should have seen it yesterday. That tiny shift in perspective was all I needed. When I went back inside, the fix took only a few minutes. The solution was not hiding in the garden. It had always been inside my own head. The garden simply gave my mind enough space to see it.
That experience is not unique. It has happened more times than I can count. And over time I realized gardening was not helping me because plants somehow make me a better programmer. It helps because gardening teaches habits that debugging also depends on. The first is observation. When you care for plants every day, you begin noticing tiny changes. A new leaf beginning to unfold. A stem leaning in a different direction. Soil drying faster than usual. A flower that is about to bloom. Nothing dramatic. Just small details that are easy to miss if you are moving too fast. Debugging feels surprisingly similar. Many bugs are not caused by huge mistakes. They are caused by one overlooked condition. One forgotten assumption. One small change that quietly affects everything around it. You do not always solve those problems by typing faster. You solve them by noticing more.
Gardening has also changed the way I think about patience. You cannot hurry a seed. You cannot ask a flower to bloom tomorrow instead of next week. You can only give it the right conditions and let time do its work. Software feels different because everything happens at incredible speed. We build. We deploy. We refresh. We expect immediate results. But good thinking does not always work at that pace. Sometimes your brain needs time in exactly the same way a plant does. Not because it is slow. Because growth has its own rhythm.
Another lesson I never expected to learn came from compost. At home, we make our own compost from vegetable peels, dried leaves, and other organic waste. At first glance, it does not look useful. It is just leftovers. But given enough time, those leftovers become the richest part of the garden. I sometimes think learning works the same way. The article you read six months ago. The bug you struggled with last year. The documentation you almost forgot. The conversation you had with another developer. None of it feels important on its own. Then one day, everything comes together. Knowledge has been quietly turning into something useful while you were not paying attention. That is why I never feel bad when I spend an afternoon reading instead of coding. Learning is not separate from building. It becomes part of every line you write later.
One of my favorite parts of the morning is simply walking through the garden before I do anything else. No headphones. No notifications. No endless scrolling. Just a few quiet minutes before the day becomes busy. Those minutes have become surprisingly valuable. They remind me that the world is much bigger than the editor on my screen. The code will still be there. The bug will still be waiting. But I will return with clearer eyes.
We spend a lot of time making software faster. We profile performance, improve queries, and remove unnecessary work. Somewhere along the way, I realized I had forgotten to do the same for myself. Not with another productivity system or another browser extension. Just by giving my mind a little room to slow down. For me, that is usually gardening. On some days, it is reading. On others, it is cooking, sitting quietly with my eyes closed, watching the stars, or simply standing in the rain for a few minutes. Your version might be completely different, and that is the point. It does not really matter what it is. What matters is having a place where your thoughts can wander without pressure. Ironically, that is often where the best ideas find you.
I still start most mornings the same way. Before opening my editor, I visit my plants. I check what is growing. I move a pot if it needs more sunlight. I turn the compost. I notice small things. Then I come back inside and begin writing code. It has become such a simple routine that I rarely think about it anymore. But looking back, I realize those quiet mornings have changed the way I approach software far more than I ever expected. The best solutions I have found did not always come from spending more hours in front of my screen. Many of them arrived after I stepped away for a little while. Sometimes the fastest way to solve a bug is not to keep looking at the code. Sometimes it is to give your mind enough room to see it differently.
If you are reading this and something unfinished is sitting heavy in your chest right now, I hope you find your own version of the terrace. It does not have to be a garden. It just has to be a place where you stop trying to solve everything, and let the answer come to you. You are not behind. You are not slow. You are simply growing at your own pace, in your own season, and that is exactly how it should be.
Top comments (42)
Great post about refreshing your mind! 😀 When we're stuck debugging, our perspective tends to become narrow. Gardening seems like a great way to refresh our mind. Also, good ideas often come to us when we take a break and refresh ourselves. 🌱
Thank you, so much! 😊
I think that's what happens too. The longer I keep staring at the same problem, the smaller my world becomes. Even a few minutes away from the screen can completely change how I look at it. I'm glad you enjoyed the post!
A sign that we're 'too good at our jobs', we know what to look for and that's why we cant see it. If it's a caching issue, you know where to look, what patterns to look for, but you miss the small details, like whether or not a simple "StateHasChanged" is actually called after the page's data refreshed server side (stupid example, but you get the idea, it's out of the scope you're debugging)
That's a really interesting point.
The more familiar we become with a certain kind of problem, the easier it is to assume we already know where the answer is. That's probably why it's often the smallest detail outside that pattern that leads us to it.
Have you ever buttered bread with a fork? Same principle, sometimes, you're so caught in your ways, that you do dishes instead of doing what you need to do, butter the bread. Because you expect a knife, you rely on using a knife, completely ignoring the potential of the fork.
Fantastic article and reminder to slow down, allow some more space, and return to things with refreshed perspectives.
Thank you so much, Ryan! 😊
I'm really happy that was your takeaway. Sometimes the hardest part isn't solving the problem, it's giving ourselves permission to step away from it for a while.
This is beautiful. I love how you describe the garden as a space for your mind to breathe, not an escape from the bug but a way to see it differently. That caching story is so relatable, the fix was always there, you just needed distance to spot the assumption you missed.
The compost metaphor really stuck with me. Learning works the same way, bits of knowledge sit there doing nothing until one day they click.
I need to find my own version of that terrace. Thanks for the reminder that slowing down is not falling behind.
Thank you so much 😊
I'm really happy the idea of finding your own version of the terrace resonated with you. I think that's the part that matters most. It doesn't have to be a garden, just something that gives your mind enough space to slow down for a while.
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment.
Changing physical context can expose assumptions that the desk keeps reinforcing. I have seen the same thing with code reviews: stepping away from the editor makes it easier to ask what the system is supposed to do instead of only following the next stack trace. Debugging is often attention management before it is tool usage.
I really like how you put that, Alex.
"Debugging is often attention management before it is tool usage" is such an interesting way to think about it. It's easy to focus on the tools we're using and forget that how we're paying attention is just as important.
Exactly. Tools matter, but the same tool used in a different attention state can produce a different result. Sometimes stepping away from the desk is just a way to stop following the stack trace mechanically and remember the product behavior you were trying to restore.
This resonated a lot. I've noticed the hardest bugs are rarely solved by staring at the same code for another hour they're solved when you finally question the assumption you've been carrying the whole time. Stepping away doesn't pause the thinking, it just lets your brain process it differently.
I really like that way of looking at it, Mayank.
"Stepping away doesn't pause the thinking, it just lets your brain process it differently." That really connected with me. For the longest time, I thought stepping away meant I was giving up on the problem. Now I've started seeing it as part of the process instead.
Same here. It's funny enough that a lot of the ideas behind Failproof AI came from those moments away from the screen rather than while actively coding. Sometimes the breakthrough isn't writing more code it's finally questioning the assumption you've been carrying all along. Please checkout our open source repo of Failproof AI, it will help you a lot. It simply integrates with your agent and make agents Fail proof, hit star also if you find it helpful :)
Thanks for sharing, Mayank. I'll take a look at the repo. 😊
Sure
This really landed. I'm pretty stubborn when something isn't going as planned — I've been stuck on things for hours, sometimes days, and I used just to sit there, getting more frustrated, sometimes genuinely angry at myself. I had to actually learn the skill of getting up and walking away, even something as small as going to get a glass of water. It felt unproductive every time, and it rarely was — the fix usually showed up on its own once I stopped forcing it.
I think what's actually happening is that staring harder just means re-checking the same wrong assumption faster, not differently. Stepping away is really the only reliable way to change the angle you're looking from, not the amount of effort. Took me way too long to actually trust that.
I could relate to this so much, Lior.
"Re-checking the same wrong assumption faster, not differently." That's such a good way to describe it. I think that's exactly what happens. We feel like we're making progress because we're still trying, but sometimes we're just going in the same circle.
It took me a long time to trust stepping away too. Now, when I feel myself going around in circles, I know it's usually a sign that I need a break instead of more time at the screen.
The detail that makes this true for me is that the code never changed, your vantage did. When you stare at a bug you keep re-checking everything around the assumption that caused it, and the assumption stays invisible because you're standing inside it. The garden doesn't hand you the answer, it pulls you far enough out to finally see the thing you'd been treating as given. Same reason talking to a rubber duck works: saying the assumption out loud is what makes it visible.
That's such a great way of putting it, Vinicius.
"The code never changed, your vantage did." I hadn't thought about it in those words, but that's exactly what happened. I also like your comparison with rubber duck debugging. In both cases, creating a little distance makes it easier to notice the assumptions we couldn't see before.
Thanks for adding that perspective.
Anytime, Shubhra. "A little distance" is the cleaner way to say it than mine.
Nice! Very philosophical piece, a bit poetic even - and point well made ...
P.S. nature is great, whether it's a garden or a forest or whatever - it's a miracle, if you just open your eyes and allow yourself to see it ...
Thank you so much, Leob! 😊
I smiled when I read your P.S. I feel exactly the same. It doesn't really matter whether it's a garden, a forest, or just a quiet corner somewhere. Nature has a way of slowing us down without even trying. I think we all need a little more of that.
Beautifully written, Shubhra 😀
I liked how you connected gardening with debugging through observation and patience. Sometimes the solution isn't in writing more code, it's in giving yourself enough space to see the problem differently. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much, Hema! 😊
I really liked how you described it. "Giving yourself enough space to see the problem differently" captures exactly what I was hoping readers would take away from this. I'm really happy it connected with you.
What you're doing is very similar to meditation. Meditation takes you away from the patterns and noise of the world and gives you a more distant place to observe it from. (It does a lot of other beneficial things as well.)
I usually write pretty simple code and I usually try to stare at it for awhile before looking at a trace, etc. The trace shows you what it did, but not what it should have done. Unless the input data is not what you expected, the trace reinforces your current perspective, it doesn't usually reveal that an approach is wrong or suboptimal.
That's a really interesting perspective, Joe.
I enjoy meditation too, so I can definitely relate to what you're saying. I really like the connection you made. I also really liked your point about traces showing what happened, not necessarily what should have happened. Sometimes we get so focused on gathering more information that we forget to question whether we're looking at the problem the right way.
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