tl;dr:Dan’s 3 favorite questions to ask when someone is stumped on a complex problem: (1) “How did you first start investigating this?” This helps us regain perspective as our focus shifts from one thing to another to another. (2) “What observations have you made?” This helps recall some of our observations. Since there are many - small and large, interesting and boring, relevant and irrelevant - we tend to not hold all of them in our head. (3) “If your hypothesis were wrong, how could we disprove it?” People get a single idea in their head about the cause of the problem, and this encourages them to shake that idea for others.
tl;dr:Each time Dan lost focus and tried to login to Twitter he updated a spreadsheet called "Twitter Attempts," where he would note what he was doing right before. This taught Dan he lost focus due to the following: (1) A shift between pragmatic and intuitive modes of thought. (2) Emotional shift. (3) Beginning of an interval of waiting. (4) Completion of a task.
tl;dr:There are often procedures that need automating. They are focus-intensive yet require little thought. These are a "slog" and can be turned into a "do-nothing script" that "encodes the instructions of a slog, encapsulating each step (that needs to happen) in a function." Dan provides an example and believes the value is immense - (1) it's easier to power through the slog. (2) It's requires less activation energy. (3) It makes future automation easier.