Working out “how come they said that thing and what they could be doing with it” (Sacks, 1995,p. 312)

Off to a good start to the day by taking in some Sacks. For some reason, I found the following both explanatory and comforting (smile):
"the rate at which you solve problems is not at all given by the fact that you had some problem you wanted to solve. So, for example, I had the sense a year ago that 'therapist/patient' is an omni-relevant device here. I didn't know how to show that this was so, or even how to find that this was so. There were bits of data that looked like it, but until, as it happened, I was working on these things without any intention of dealing with the issue of omni-relevance, not much was happening. It was when I was working on the priority character of those insertable sequences, and asked, ' how is that priority invoked, and what allows this one or that one to do it?' that it became apparent that it was material which was very much related to the phenomenon of omni-relevance. Now that happens in many cases. It means that you often have to wait for some data to strike you, or to occur in some sequence for you to be able to solve some ongoing problem. Or you may have solutions sitting around to problems that you haven't been able to pose." (Sacks, 1995, p. 316)