Missing a feature - Is Your Mind Open to Your Creative Muse?

Without naming a software tooling I was recently using, I so surprised that it lacked a feature I wanted to use.  So surprised in fact, that I figured another user must have already entered it as a feature enhancement.    When I went to there enhancement request system, I could not find it.  I am active their forum and while I found an active discussion about the feature (and several proposed work-arounds), it is clearly not in the immediate future.  What was I to do?   Further, this was just one step along the way to solving a much larger problem.

After several days wondering what I would do and pondering the work-arounds discussed on the  forum, suddenly a solution to towards the larger problem emerged.   Strange, but I am convinced that if the original feature had existed, I would still be chasing the larger solution

What happened? Three key things that I can think of:

• I thought about more how my feature would have helped with with the larger problem.
• I collaborated with others on the forum to see their struggles and possible solutions.
• My mind continued the work the problem.

What can we theorize about this last point?   My spouse is a special education teacher and statistics show that a "practiced skill" must be repeated 27 times to completed with 80% accuracy.    I no doubt read about 2 dozen solutions on the forum/news group and I am sure my mind worked it at least that many times.

Stuck on a problem?  Seek out others, listen to them, think about what they are saying.   Then let your mind "riff" (27 times) on all of it.