Comment by scrubs
2 days ago
Half of all math proofs are guys walking around in nature or sitting in it. The last one I read was Ken Ono's breaththrough on partition numbers ... he was on a hike with a friend.
I might also add hard work gets you to a frustration point you might need first before it comes in its time ... IOW I'm not 100% sold on it just comes for free ... maybe better expressed as know when it's time to take a break too.
That's only when the breakthrough happened and misses all the rest of the time spent on the problem.
And nothing says they weren't thinking about the problem when it happened.
I've had a lot of "aha" moments not sitting by my desk, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't thinking of the problem. When people say they had an idea in the shower, I suspect it's precisely because they were undistracted enough to focus on the problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect