Sometimes we rush things. Plan soak time. Soak time allows us to not focus in an idea, and therefore focus on it. Confused?
Watch House M.D. That’s soak time.
Creativity is the art of non-focus.
The best ideas are obvious, simple and as a result elusive. Evading our envisioned enterprise, the elusive exists on the edge of the eye. This is why we need soak time. It’s allowing the aha moment and fresh perspective.
Soak time is simple: work on a project then shelve it for a period of time and focus on something else until you pick the project up…or you get that aha moment.
Bottom line:
Plan soak time into your projects.
T.Woznek 
“Creativity is the art of non-focus.” I disagree. As Willy Wonka might say, “Invention is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch-ripple.”
In other words, it takes a lot of hard work to come up with anything worthwhile.
I admit that the best ideas usually strike when you least expect them–that would be the Muse smacking me upside the head with a hammer–but without persistent effort, they’re just ideas.
For example, I’ve had the best book never written in my head for years, but there it remains, worthless, until I do something with it.
Once I do something with it, then it’s soak time. There, I fully agree with you: let it sit, leave it alone. That is why poets, for example, will write poetry and not look at it for six months. Every idea seems like gold at first; it’s not until later, when you come back to it, that you realize it was really brass.
Edison would hold two heavy balls while trying to sleep. When asleep the balls would drop, he’d wake up and write what came to mind.
Art cannot be art without work. Ideas are potential while execution is kinetic, to use a physics metaphor.
On a tour a CEO saw a man in his office staring out the window. Asking about the employee, he learned the gentleman saved the company significant money. The CEO ordered: “Get him an office with a bigger window.”
Creativity takes reading broadly and engaging in various adventures…it takes play and discovery. To say creativity is the art of non-focus isn’t to say creativity takes no work…all art takes work, especially when what’s needed is on your peripheral vision.
I’ve never met a truly creative person who was lazy. Maybe there is one out there, but they are often extremely busy and diverse in what they do.