The Shower and The Future

I get some of my best ideas in the shower.

I don't recommend it for everyone, but it seems to work for me. The shower, sitting at a stoplight, even while waiting in the car while my wife finishes the shopping. I seem to just need a few moments of Alone Time, to gather my thoughts and bring everything to bear on a problem.

Sometimes, you just can not do any more, sitting in front of a computer screen. When that time comes you have two choices: you can get up and do something else, or you can try to slog through the problem you are wrestling with for as long as it takes. In my experience, putting your head down and redoubling effort rarely pays off in finished work I am proud of.

I am not talking about giving up. I have not seen a nested-table design I could not unwrap, eventually, just by working in layers. But every week I come upon something I have no experience with that seems like it ought to be some easy variation of A, B, C that does not turn out to be as easy as that.

I have found that seven is about my limit of attempts. In almost every case I can get the basic idea down and flesh out the details right away and then spend a few attempts in adjusting the margin or padding or some other detail. But if I can't get it done in seven attempts, I need to get up and walk around, start in on another project and come back to the original problem later. It helps if "another project" has very little to do with the first work. For example, if I am trying to get some high-spiff navigation to work, it works best if I switch to catching up on my e-mail, attend a meeting or work on some other site's page footers. It does no good to switch from one navigation scheme to another. I can't even read a developer Web site if the story is about navigation. I need to get as far away from the problem as I can.

And then something amazing happens. It's like my brain solves the problem with idle cycles available throughout the day. I have been walking down the hallway when inspiration suddenly hits me. "Wrap it all in a <div> and apply the style to it! Or something.

You know more than you think you do. You have absorbed more than you think you understand. If you let your brain stew on a problem for a while, it may work out the puzzle for you while you are doing the laundry or grocery shopping. Just don't sit at your screen, trying to pound a round peg into a square hole. Get up and walk around for a bit and get some distance and you may be surprised at how quickly a solution pops into your head.

The future is coming, again.

Yesterday, we laid down the first plan for the next version of the Templates. I am liking what I have seen, so far. It is a careful plan with well-defined goals, clear and reachable deadlines and, again, the charter to incorporate as much of the new technology and tools that people have come to expect from modern Web sites.

Even back in grade school, I can remember the wonderful feeling of possibility, in holding a fresh, new, empty notebook. Later in life I beheld the blank first page of a word processor the same way, wondering if they give Pulitzer Prizes for computer reviews (sadly, no). Before you put that first character down, your work can become anything. Once you have committed to that first character, though, the rest flows more or less of necessity. It is an amazing transformation, and it happens quickly. We could do something, here. We could raise the bar. We could advance the cause. We could screw it up.

I love it. It's going to be a lot of fun, again.