Do you concur?

Just today, while doing some reading, I came across a bit of data that I find to be true from past experience, but have never really thought all that much about.

When I was probably around ten or so, my local rec center had this game called Super Pac Man. It was basically Pac Man with a slight twist. IF you don't know who or what Pac Man is, please buy a ticket back to the '80s. I promise it will be worth the cost.

The game had both regular and "super" power pellets. The super pellets made Pac Man much larger and let you munch your way through some barriers and basically ignore the ghosts. If you consumed both of the power pellets one after then other then,for a brief time, you became an awesome, enormous, dot munching, ghost crunching, unstoppable force that zipped around the stage wreaking havoc and destroying barriers. After which you returned to the standard mild mannered, ghost fearing, dot muncher.

I was always pretty good at Pac Man so when Super Pac Man came out, I was determined to be the best. But not having a large allowance, I couldn't play as much as I wanted to make that happen. So, I did all the research I possibly could. Hours were spent reading up on the best patterns to use on each board and how to "fake-out" each ghost to make them stop chasing you.

Being a kid, I spent my allowance on various different things. So, some days when I stepped up to the machine, I was able to play more games in a row than others. Over time I found that, the games where I scored the highest were generally the first or second that I played in a given day. Each day that I played, I was better than the previous, but more practice on any given day did not really make me all that much better that particular day.

Although I played it on the Nintendo, rather than in the arcade, I had a similar experience with Tetris. The first game or two I played each day were generally the best for the day. Other games played usually averaged better then previous days, but while I was directly focused on the game, I wasn't learning anything new about it. And actually, I quite specifically found that I scored significantly better if I was somewhat distracted, letting my subconscious mind make some of the choices for me.

Throughout my life, this has happened in many different areas, not just with games. The reading that I was doing today said that various examples in both psychological studies and the practical experience of many world famous inventors shows that, we actually do our best at a task when we are not directly focusing on it. Many of the ideas behind some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs and inventions have occurred at a time where the genius involved was on a break or out of the office.

This data suggests that the best way to solve a problem is to first do as much research as you possibly can about the subject at hand. Learn all you can. Focus your conscious mind as hard as you can towards knowing all there is to know about this one thing. Think with all your might about finding a creative solution to the problem. Then, drop it and go do something else.

Later on come back to the issue and pick up where you left off. When your conscious mind walks away from the problem, your subconscious mind will engage and often either solve the problem completely while you are "not looking" or will come up with the seeds for the idea that will solve it.

If I had just read this concept around the time I was still playing Super Pac Man, I may have had my doubts. But due to a lifetime of experience, I concur.

Do you see examples of this happening in your own life?