Hey friends,

The Olympics are here! We haven't won a bunch of medals yet, but...

You win some, you luge some...

Thinking Too Hard 🤔

Last week, I wrote about ways to overcome uncertainty, but what do you do after you've cleared the uncertainty and you're just stuck on a hard problem?

Thinking hard can be difficult to do; to sit with a problem. For a long time, I had a specific idea of what that would look like: a frenzy of intense thought accompanied by fits of productivity. I thought that it was a contest of constancy — of pressing as hard you can into something. However, I've come to rethink what 'thinking hard' presents. Sometimes you need some space. Diving deep, then taking a step back. To Jim's point, it doesn't LOOK like work, and doesn't FEEL like work, but a shift of perspective and letting that issue slow-burn in your subconscious can lead to epiphanies while doing completely unrelated things like washing dishes or mowing the grass! (Mindless physical tasks seem to be the most successful in activating that subconscious processing!)

So the next time you're stuck on a hard problem, try loading up your brain with the problem and then stepping away for a while. You might be surprised at what your brain does with some space!

Interesting Web Bits 🍜

Web Stuff

• Adam Argyle shows us how to make nice select fields with mostly CSS (but only in Chrome for right now).
• Preethi shows us how to make CSS-only bar charts with newer features.

Other Stuff

• "The most important change made by an artistic endeavor is the change it makes in you."
• Matheus Lima isn't wrong about the question, "What do you think?" In that it's often better to present an opinion, recommendation, or idea as opposed to simply sifting for someone ELSE's opinion, recommendation, or idea. But that's assuming you feel relatively safe voicing those thoughts, which is a gut-check on how you're reacting to others' shared ideas. Thoughtful? Dismissive?
• I never watched much Wallace & Gromit, but they made a font from it.

Weird, Watch, and Play

• 👽 Dare you approach the Monastery of St. Blamesnir?
• 👽 Julia is a wild piece of fiction writing, very heady, but very interesting.
• 🎮 Make 45 Groups of 45
• 🎮 Can you connect all 14 stations in Tricky Tangled Train Tracks?? 🚂