Different people might think diffrent, but when solving complex problems I do think I have seperate "think about / gather the facts" and "formulate the solution

Different people might think diffrent, but when solving complex problems I do think I have seperate "think about / gather the facts" and "formulate the solution" phases. I don't think about the totality of facts in the world - I think my brain is mentally extracting the facts that are relevant to the problem and then reason about those facts. There is certinaly back/forth though, but I think I go "here is a bit of information, how does that apply? ok but what about this fact? ok here is how that would apply considering something else..." but I think this is still a gather -> solve -> gather -> solve