Last weekend, we were working on a new jigsaw on the kitchen table. It was a painting of dozens of classic paperbacks, many of which I’d read back in high school. 1984. Howl. Great Gatsby. Old Man and the Sea. I remember almost every cover well.

As we were well into the puzzle, a weird thing started to happen.

I would pick up one of the 1000 pieces and immediately know where it went. Sometimes, I would reach across Jenny to a far corner and bloop the piece just snapped into place.

Whoa.

​

Jenny and I have a morning tradition — we sit in the garden with a cup of tea and play Wordle on the NY Times app. Some mornings, we agonize over it. I’ve tried using a pen to work through every possible combination, but that just bollockses up the process.

But on the occasional beautiful day, I’ll sit and gaze at the letters, like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, letters swimming ghostly laps around my head, and then, poof, I’ll just blurt out a word. J looks at me aghast.

What the hell is going on?

​

I’ll walk Twiglet in the morning. I’ll stand in the shower. I’ll wake up in the morning. And suddenly, ideas snap into focus. Words tumble into sentences. New thoughts spring from the ether.

When I push and strain, make outlines, write notes, whine, and whimper… nada. Not a sausage. But while I’m flossing, sure.

What is my brain doing behind its ivory walls?

​

When I did a little research on the subject, I found psychologists, neurologists, and NPR essayists kept making the same distinction between “you” and “your brain.”

Wait, aren’t I my brain? Yes and no.

My brain is like the engine room on the USS Enterprise, but I am Kirk, sitting at the helm.

Or, more prosaically, my brain is my MacBook Pro with its M1 Pro chip, 16-core Neural Engine, 150GB/s memory bandwidth, 36GB unified memory, 192 KB instruction cache, 24 MB shared L2 cache, and 33700 million transistor count.

And “I” am two index fingers pecking the keyboard.

A lotta stuff goes on under the hood.

​

That’s how it has to be because my conscious brain can only focus on a small amount of information at any given time. Plus, it tends to work linearly. The subconscious can juggle loads of balls.

Think about all the information hitting the peripheral vision of your eyeballs right now while you focus on one letter at a time. You can’t think about all that stuff — you need to read this essay.

Meanwhile, there’s an insane amount of complex, parallel processing happening subconsciously that you are totally unaware of. You don’t think about how your colon is digesting your muffin, how much pressure your fingers need to hold your device, and all the myriad things the engine room is handling.

So when the subterranean gears and levers cough up the answer for Wordle, “Me” can only say, “Golly! Me smart!” It’s wild.

(Remind me to order one of those “I’m with Stupid.➡” t-shirts for my cerebellum.)

​

The way to think better turns out to be to think less.

I just read an article in Nature about a study on zoning out. The researchers gave four groups of people some dastardly problem to solve. After a couple of minutes, they interrupted them and gave each group a new set of instructions.

One group was told to rest, one was given a different tough problem to solve, and the third got some sort of undemanding activity that tends to make the mind wander, doodling or some such. The fourth group didn’t get a break at all.

Twelve minutes later, they were told to go back to the original problem. Three of the four groups performed roughly as well after the break. The group with the mind-wandering activity improved by …. 41%!

The research concluded that, like REM, mind-wandering facilitates creative insights. Take your mind off it, and the solution will be revealed. (If you get in trouble for staring out the window, feel free to cite the study.)

Makes sense.

Much of the time, my conscious mind is taking up energy and attention from those subterranean processes. Zoning out or meditating puts “me” into neutral so the subconscious can go full throttle.

​

I love my brain. It’s one of my favorite organs. But like most gizmos, it didn’t come with instructions, so I am always trying to learn to use it better.

Here are a few tips:

Trust the process. My subconscious works on a different schedule than the guy in the driver's seat. Stand back and let it do its thing.

Keep the doors open. Meditation, freewriting, and dream journaling are all gateways to the subconscious. They help me access the recesses more readily.

Get off its back. I have to stop expecting my subconscious to work my way and to my schedule. Instead, I recognize that mistakes are its way of throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Failures are just stepping stones.

Feed the monster. I read and watch loads of stuff with no immediate application for what I’m working on at the moment because I know a) it will distract “Me” and b) will fill the resources of my subconscious with diverse points of view and information that will eventually find a place.

Remember: My subconscious has huge hard drives with loads of storage space—it doesn't seem to forget stuff like my conscience mind does. Now, where are my glasses?

​

It ain’t Wordle, but I find this stuff very interesting. I hope you do, too.

​

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. Have you been paying attention? No? Good!

P.P.S. In this week's Studio Notebook, I shared a lesson from my new course, My Illustrated Life. I got so many emails from people saying they were super-inspired by it. Some admitted that the idea of creating an illustrated memoir seemed daunting, but once they watched the lesson, they went from intimidated to fired up. If you've been waiting to sign up, today's the day the entire course is released. You'll get full access to all 40 + lessons and several hundred prompts and projects. Learn more about it here. ​

P.P.P.S. Oh, and if you want to get cool perks like this, subscribe to Studio Notebook. Your first month is half off, just $3.50. Sign up here.