When we actively pursue answers or solutions to a problem, they almost never materialize, but when we engage in routine, relaxing activities that require little active thought, they do. Shelley H. Carson, a Harvard University researcher and psychologist, said once that if we’re troubled by a problem, any interruption in focus provides “an incubation period . . . In other words, a distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution.”
