I hope research along these lines helps clarify the folk wisdom about subconscious cognition. Everybody "knows" that if you need to hoover up existing knowledg

I hope research along these lines helps clarify the folk wisdom about subconscious cognition. Everybody "knows" that if you need to hoover up existing knowledge, you should focus intensely and block everything else out. To learn an existing system or API, set yourself up with a long, focused coding session. If you're stuck on a problem that needs to be solved or a false understanding that needs to be corrected, do something relaxing and unrelated. It's not clear exactly what you should do to enable that subconscious process. This study suggests that daydreaming works. Is high-pressure, focused thinking okay if it doesn't have anything to do with the problem you need to solve? What about competitive sports? What about the mentally quiet yet highly attuned state achieved during endurance exercise? Does caffeine help or hurt? So many questions.