Sometimes ideas do not appear when you are concentrating your attention and mysteriously appear when you are not. Modern science recognizes this as a result of incubating the problem in your subconscious yet can't account for why it occurs. A majority of scientists, artists, and writers report that they get their best ideas and insights when not thinking about the problem. Ideas come while walking, recreating, or working on some other unrelated problem. This suggests how the creative act came to be associated with Adivine inspiration@ for the illumination appears to be involuntary.
The more problems, ideas and thoughts that you think about from time to time, the more complex becomes the network of information in your mind. The more work you put into thinking about a problem, the more thoughts and bits of information you put into random motion. When you quit thinking about the subject and decide to forget it, your subconscious mind doesn't quit working. Your thoughts keep colliding, combining and making associations. This is why you've experienced suddenly remembering names, getting solutions to problems you've forgotten about, and ideas out of the blue when you are relaxing and not thinking about any particular thing.
