Let your mind coast

You can still get somewhere coasting.

I've long been an advocate for letting the subconscious do some of the heavy lifting when trying to solve problems. Many times my mind has solved problems for me - when I wasn't thinking about the problem. In extreme cases I have even woken from sleep knowing the solution to a problem (in the most bizarre example I dreamed I was a piece of data that had to navigate an algorithm). In any case - my advice has been to work on a problem until you seem to have hit a dead-end or impassable obstacle. At that point you should do something else - preferably something else that does not require heavy thinking (but at least make sure it is something else).

Recent research shows that this idea works. This new study (see links below) specifically examined when your brain is involved in a fairly repetitive or automatic function. In the study participants were given a fairly easy, repetitive task that the researchers knew led to mind wandering. The participants brains were scanned and the researchers discovered that the part of their brain that works on problem solving was quite active while they were involved in the given task. This is interpreted as meaning that while they were involved in the given easy task, they put their brain in neutral. And, the brain noticing that it had some free time decided that it would work on some of the harder problems it had been storing up (no indication of what exactly these problems were, but we always have something going in our lives on that needs to be fixed or organized).

Here is a link to a GizMag description of the study, and even better, a link to an interview given by one of the researchers (Dr. Kalina Christoff) on CBC's Quirks and Quarks science show (radio show, so audio only).