A thought about thinking

One of the implications of the realization that one thinks with one's brain and not just one's conscious mind is the implication that you can think about things that you are not consciously attending to. Of course there are lots of examples: waking up with the solution of a problem "one had slept on", letting problems perk until the solution appears, having a solution pop up while "thinking about something else", recalling at 3:00 a.m. the thing you could not recall during the day at the opportune moment.

The problem is, how do you assure that the unconscious portion of your brain will be attending to the problem for which you seek a solution. Probably one approach is to obsess about a problem for a long time so that your whole brain gets the message, and then turn your conscious attention to something else or go to sleep.