I like working with grownups.

Here's an example:

When I was a wee little New Hire at my current employer, one of the things that came up a lot was the "15 minute rule." That is, if you're stuck on a problem, take a solid 15 minutes to bash your brain against it in whatever manner you see fit. However, if you still don't have an answer after 15 minutes, you must ask someone. I shorten this down to "You must try, and then you must ask." It's a simply-worded rule, which works something like this:

If you've hit the point of giving up, you have to push yourself for another 15 minutes. The pressure is now off. You know that in 15 minutes, you'll be able to take what you found and talk to another person about it and get their help. For right now, all you have to do is step back and look at the whole problem from the top. Maybe you'll find the solution that was sitting there all along. Maybe you'll convince yourself it's completely unsolvable. Whatever you end up doing, those next 15 minutes are where you look at the problem one more time.

During those 15 minutes, you must document everything you're doing so that you can tell someone else. So, what does "look at the problem one more time" mean? It means taking notes. Lots of them. I'm a big fan of using a paper notebook with an excruciatingly fine-point pen, because I don't need to move windows out of the way to keep writing in it, and I can fit a lot of words on a single page. Use what you like, but keep writing. Write down all the steps, all the assumptions, everything you tried, and anythingyou can do to reproduce the problem. More likely than not, you've now probably figured out at least one other way to solve the problem, just by getting it out of your head and onto paper.