Ahh..the good old "Let us step back and stare at the problem" trick that my learning theory professor used. Not sure what is particularly profound about it, ext

Ahh..the good old "Let us step back and stare at the problem" trick that my learning theory professor used. Not sure what is particularly profound about it, external observation of it always (to me at least) made it sound somewhat mystical. I feel like the "hack here" is to have so much intuition for the problem that you defocus slightly and approach the problem using your "peripheral vision" (Using terminology from Paul Zeitz's excellent book on problem solving :).