[bradstewart]

You're on to something here.

If I had some signal that indicated "sufficient information uploaded, algorithm running" it'd be easy to stop. But the (obvious) problem is that signal is, usually, the discovery of the solution. Which happens well after all the being stuck.

There is something comforting about accepting that banging my head against a wall might just be a requirement of figuring the thing out, though.

[hyperpallium2]

"Banging your head" usually means lots of trial and error, that is all error. But beyond uploading information, every experiment creates new information. ("I haven't failed - I've discovered 1,000 ways that won't work!" https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/31/edison-lot-results/)

When the search space is exponential, with too many combinations to try, pruning off a branch is enormously helpful (and perfectly harmless... provided the solution doesn't happen to lie on that branch - those are my most stuck times).

One signal is when I can't think of anything else to try - that means I've extracted all the information I can. The trouble is, I'm pretty good at thinking of things to try.