202211030958 Creative accomplishments happen over time

We need to allow our ideas to germinate (which requires time) in order to come to fundamental, novel understanding of interesting problems.

History shows that the typical pattern of creativity is as follows:¹

1. There is at least some dim recognition of a problem.
2. A short or long period of problem refinement. This stage is important because it's likely that our experience will phrase the problem in a conventional way leading only to mediocre or conventional solutions. We must give ourselves time to fully understand the problem for what it is outside of our pre-conceptions. We might even abandon the problem for some time (allowing our subconscious to work on it 202109090947 Idea gardening). However, we must be emotionally involved and want to find a fundamental, novel solution.
3. The moment of insight or creativity. This may only be an attempt and might not work but it leads back into step 2. There are also times when we can change the problem itself to fit the solution or perhaps ask ourselves "If I had a solution, what would it look like?"
4. Often there is still much work to be done cleaning and refining even the closest, most correct solutions once the problem has been "solved".