Have you ever experienced the "incubation effect"?

[Still-alive]

In psychology, incubation refers to the unconscious processing of problems, when they are set aside for a period of time, that may lead to insights. Incubation is related to intuition and insight in that it is the unconscious part of a process whereby an intuition may become validated as an insight. Incubation substantially increases the odds of solving a problem, and benefits from long incubation periods with low cognitive workloads.

Tl:dr its when you can't seem to solve a problem you step away from it for a time then come back and find that you can solve it with new insight.

I find that this happens when im playing a video game for example. say im at a boss i can't seem to beat. well i will take a bit of a break from it and do other things. then after a time come back and find a way to beat it. have you ever experienced this before? if not maybe you should try it out with any task you gotta get done.

I have experience this before

I have not experienced this before

[Worrying]

Best question of the day 👍I am having bad days these 2 days and feeling so lethargic and in such a dilemma of whether to go out today to deal with something which is gonna be so stressful if I do.

Your question reminds me that sometimes when I temporarily put things aside and pamper myself for a good break, I can get new insights and solutions.

I notice this incubation effect also while sleeping, cos I sometimes figure out the solutions by dreaming them. It is strange but true.

[Still-alive]

thanks. yeah maybe watch a movie or read a book while you're away from that stressful thing you gotta deal with.

[Worrying]

Maybe I become dumb dumb when I am stressed. Lol.

[IslaTheWitch]

Quite popular for SE's. It happens a few times for week when I take shower, cook, do shopping or go for run... the worst situation, you sleep and then pop! Your brain wakes you up - hey I have a solution for a bug in line 59...

Hey, are you sleeping?

[Static_In_The_Attic]

In life there are problems & there are solutions & sometimes when you’re trying to solve a problem the solution can be found when you’re thinking about or doing something else. As for me I have experienced the incubation effect & it happens a lot.

[Staximus]

It's usually when I think of the best solutions or things to say

[petitedollbabee]

I do this a lot, especially with tough video games like yourself - I’ll fail at a boss fight so many times, and when I start to get worked up about it, I’ll step away and cool off and go do something else. By the time that I come back to the game, my mind has cleared and I always manage to beat the fight in the game.

[Ms_Facesitter]

Sometimes it's good to drop it for a moment because your head might be somewhere else and you couldn't think straight, you couldn't see all the options.

[Sour-rose]

O for sure. Sometimes, the problem ain't getting easier. So i either let it go for now to do another and come back to it later. Seems to help in my situation.

[menina]

I did that for 4 years but I still don't know if it solved my problem... 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️

[msmissydc]

Yes, that happens often for me. I do give it a chance quite often because of my procrastination.

[mandyfire98]

I do this all of the time

[WhitneySnow]

Yes!