I think a lot of people have experienced the situation where you spend like 10 hours staring at the same code trying to figure out why it's not working, then co

I think a lot of people have experienced the situation where you spend like 10 hours staring at the same code trying to figure out why it's not working, then come back to it the next day and see the problem within minutes. It's like the brain gets stuck in repetitive cycles and you need to flush your cache to get a fresh perspective. What the author's describing almost sounds like an equivalent to this with regard to inspiration- if you're in a creative state where you're constantly hacking away at something, it helps to step away from it all for a few weeks/months/whatever to let your creativity and inspiration rejuvenate. Also, sometimes people get burned out without realizing it- this helps that too. For an unrelated example, sometimes I'll get really into some video game and obsess over it for several weeks. I'll get into the habit of playing it for a certain amount of time every day. At some point, I burn out on it and it's not as fun anymore, but it seems like it takes me a long time to realize that. I keep doing it because that's the thing that I do, but there's a lag where I'm not getting as much out of it and just keep doing it from inertia and habit. People's work habits can be very similar and I think there's a parallel with this article.