I am rather autistic and this is how I think, toosies. 90-95% of my time working on a project is just sitting, staring into space, completely unaware of the world around me. I think it's because while you can "explore the field" with compute, as it were, the informational shapes of whatever the problem is at hand are always there, and usually they are _much_ more simple than people seem to let on, IMPO.

I'm not really sure how to describe it for me, as I have partial aphantasia, and a kind of weird shape-synesthesisa which also blends with my sensibilities around physical taste. It can really only be described as "feeling" a shape, where a shape represents some quantity of information for a topic, if it were the case that I'm not using receptors in my hands to touch something, but instead, it's the shape feeling its own shape relative to other shapes, and it's not as much a touch-like sensation as a visceral, semi-intuitive experience of the information of whatever that shape-object-whatever represents.

I do not think that thinking in this way was fully formed from a young age (i.e. it used to be an extremely active story-based imagination), it seems to have developed in some manner as an (informationally) dissociative coping mechanism because my autism is strong enough that the world does not stop overstimulating me. When I am in this headspace, I am generally unaware of sensory input, there is only me, and the (generally mathematical) "problem" at hand. Sometimes I can go for hours, working on a problem, moving shapes and concepts around, and fitting them together in a way that explains more while taking less information to do so. This can be both a gift and a hindrance.

I generally have to limit my budget for sensory stimulation and for 'new' things because my brain is so sensitive to information. This generally is more of a disability than a help, on the whole, though it is nice to be able to solve problems in the way that I do, that is one comfort to me.

I do have a tendency to want to fit things in my brain before thinking about them, but the 'onboarding' process can take a while. I used to get in trouble all the time as a kid before this sense by trying to do mental math all of the time, I would sit, think for a long time about a problem, write an answer down, and move on. Unfortunately, instead of being encouraged, it was something I got punished for (I was homeschooled), and there wasn't much in the way of what I would consider appropriate adaptivity in that regard.

Problems are fun, and the hardest part about them I think is that we are generally crap at phrasing them and looking for solutions, most of my work seems to just be cutting through the cruft of whatever trends-du-jour or symbolic obfuscation shenanigans are going on for a given topic. Once you sort out the structure of a given mathematical problem, the answer seems to fall into place well, and one does not always need compute for that.

So, all of that to say, each person thinks and processes things in a different way, and if you're into information theory, then one might say the kl divergence (in a manner of speaking) between how you encode and solve problems might be very high with djikstra's methods of thinking! It depends upon what unique strengths and weaknesses you have, and that can take years to find whichever special problem solving mode fits best to your sensibilities and gifts. For example, I have significant trouble around symbols that have potentially multiple meanings (like, as is often the case with many formal mathematical definitions), and since those take a disproportionate amount of "processing time" for me, my problem solving methods have evolved to replace and/or avoid them unless necessary. That is likely a silly solution for many people!

So, while you may not entirely fit Djikstra's natural proclivities, there might be elements that fit you. But whatever fits you best as a problem-solving technique is likely, frustratingly, and beautifully, entirely unique and specific to you. <3 :'))))