I’ve been working on a new kind of computer interface, and having a great time doing it. It’s kind of my “shiny new toy”. When I was six years old I felt the same way about a plastic dinosaur. Only now I get to make the dinosaur myself.<\/p>\n
At some point a few days ago I reached a kind of impasse, not sure what next to add to my little project. Feeling restless, I went back and started playing with a completely unrelated project, something I’d worked on years before. Immediately I saw problems with the old project, and wanted to fix them.<\/p>\n
Then it occurred to me — I could add things to the new<\/i> project that would let me use it to tweak the old<\/i> project. Suddenly my current project had renewed purpose and meaning, and it was clear to me what to add to it next.<\/p>\n
It seems to me there is an important principle at work here. If you get stuck on something, the most productive solution might be to work on something completely different — something that will get your mind thinking in different ways and get you unstuck.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the best way forward is sideways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been working on a new kind of computer interface, and having a great time doing it. It’s kind of my “shiny new toy”. When I was six years old I felt the same way about a plastic dinosaur. Only now I get to make the dinosaur myself. At some point a few days ago … Continue reading “Sideways”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9478"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9479,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9478\/revisions\/9479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}