Recruit Your Dreams

From Richard Hamming’s “You and Your Research“:

“Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, “creativity comes out of your subconscious.” Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you’re aware your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day.

If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there’s the answer.

For those who don’t get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn’t produce the big result.

So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don’t let anything else get the center of your attention – you keep your thoughts on the problem.

Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.”