The Lightning Bug Strategy

The Concept

The Lightning Bug strategy is about finding the bright light in the darkness of the debugging process. So much time is spent being frustrated when faced with an unknown problem. That leaves us emotionally compromised, clouding the logical parts of our mind we need to actually figure out the source of the issue we're facing.

What if we looked at each and every bug as a friend instead of an enemy? What if each problem was an opportunity to learn, to improve our skills and to get better at solving the problems that follow?

The Deck

A tactile set of prompts to pull us out of our debugging stalemates

Inspired by the venerable and wonderful Oblique Strategies, this deck of cards provides 50 questions and related self care exercises to help us pause and think about the problem at hand in a new way.

It's easy to forget the obvious sometimes, but the deck helps us regain focus, reflect on the problem from a new angle, and help us confirm that we know what we think to be true about the bug we're solving.

The deck is currently available as a ZIP file of images that can be printed on card stock or ordered as a set of business cards.