We’ve all experienced being stuck when trying to solve a problem, and then after sleeping on it the solution sometimes comes. What Bertrand Russell adds to this is how we can make it come all the time:
My own belief is that a conscious thought can be planted into the unconscious if a sufficient amount of vigour and intensity is put into it. I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon some rather difficult topic the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity—the greatest intensity of which I am capable—for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed underground. After some months, I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.
(Quoted from page 49 of The Conquest of Happiness, by Bertrand Russell. Routledge Classics, 2006; first published in 1930 by George Allen & Unwin.)
For a brief biography of Bertrand Russell, click here. For images of or relating Bertrand Russell, click here.
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