I first heard this term from Michael Carducci at one of the No Fluff Just Stuff conferences. At least in this case, it is a way of saying: take a step back, relax, and think about this from another perspective.
Relax
It is amazing how much you can actually do when you are not stressing about how much needs to get done. Or even stressing about how to do it. Stress moves you away from getting into the “zone”. A certain level of relaxation is needed to let the creative juices flow.
In the midst of firefighting a production issue, when taking a break is the last thing on anybody’s mind, sometimes that is exactly what is needed. Take a walk, try not to think about the problem at hand, and come back at it with a clearer mind. This can help to come at the problem from a different perspective. It may help you to recall something that seemed trivial earlier, but may be the key to the issue.
Starting a New Project
When starting a new development project, I tend to get blocked very easily. If it is something brand new to me, a new tool or technology, or even a new large problem that I haven’t solved before, I get overwhelmed by all the possibilities. I start out by doing my homework, reading up on the new thing, playing with examples, all of that background stuff. But then when I really need to pull a bit of information from a list of dicts in Python, what should I choose? List compression? A simple for loop? map and a lambda expression? A simple task suddenly becomes a decision pain point.
At those times, it is best to just take a step back, go for a walk (or lay in a hammock for a while), and just think (or not think). Sometimes just thinking through some of the possibilities, without coding, will help. Sometimes just forgetting about the problem and coming back with a fresh perspective is the ticket.
In any case, quite often the right thing to do is to get out of the heat for a while. Take a break, and come back to the problem at a later time. Just don’t go so far as to actually be in the realm of procrastination or laziness.