Passion vs detachment

March 24, 2011

I’m confused about something, namely: how you can be both passionate and detached.

Example: I was working on a problem the other day, something about grade point averages for a graduate employment campaign. This problem and I have a history. I was determined to solve it, if not once and for all, then as close as practical. Then I ran into a roadblock - something or other to do with writing results back to a database. The details aren’t important. I asked my 1up for help, and he obliged by telling me that I should change my approach and avoid the roadblock completely.

I hated that idea. Admittedly I was already a bit cranky because I was hungry (cf. my blood sugar issues), but I was also really attached to my way of solving the problem. The idea that we should take a few extra steps for caution’s sake (like not writing to the DB before we check the results) was repugnant. Surely we should just get it done, right?

The problem here is that I was attached to my solution, not to solving the problem. So how do we avoid that? How can you be both passionate about solving a problem, and detached from your solution?