It’s something you can train yourself to get better at. At least in my experience:
1. Get a tough problem
2. Read all the surrounding information about it. If a solution doesn’t appear then it’s distraction time
3. Go do something completely unrelated for a while. I like to tinker with something mechanical but listening to music or doing exercise both work. Anything where you can get a decent flow going works for me.
Quite often just after I have finished with the distraction I get a good idea about the original problem. It used to be about 50/50 whether this would work for me but it’s now around 80/20.
Like anything it takes practice and you need to find the right distraction for you
1. Get a tough problem
2. Read all the surrounding information about it. If a solution doesn’t appear then it’s distraction time
3. Go do something completely unrelated for a while. I like to tinker with something mechanical but listening to music or doing exercise both work. Anything where you can get a decent flow going works for me.
Quite often just after I have finished with the distraction I get a good idea about the original problem. It used to be about 50/50 whether this would work for me but it’s now around 80/20.
Like anything it takes practice and you need to find the right distraction for you