>It's often suggested that one needs to work hard to crack a hairy problem. Nonsense. You've got a subconscious system always processing some idea, integrating external unrelated stimuli while you're doing something else: what is commonly called thinking outside the box. The hairier the problem, the least effective pointed focus is to crack it. You can't think outside the box if you're putting all your effort on the box. Go do something else.

Doing both is quite possible, and helps ...

>Conscious thought and focus is but a very small part of our intelligence. Learn to delegate some tasks to your background process.

I'll just leave these here:

Tech Video: Rich Hickey: Hammock-Driven Development

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2016/03/tech-video-rich-hickey-h...

Lateral thinking:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking