Another way to frame the idea would be to rely more on your subconscious - all those automatic responses to situations based on a lifetime of experience. This is standard practice for designers who spend a great deal of time absorbing the aspects of a problem at hand, then put it aside. A minute/hour/day/week later comes the Aha!, a subconsciously formed integration solving the problem. (No magic involved).

One experiment I tried was for a very large multiple choice test. (For the Architect exam, 3 days of 10 hour tests). I found that when taking the practice test, 95% of the time that I went back and changed an answer, thinking I had answered it wrong the first time, I actually changed it from right to wrong. So for the actual test, I went through the test once only with one answer, left hours before every one else, and aced it. The moral: The Subconscious is a good thing - you can rely on it.

Nice anecdote.