It's fairly well known that the human mind continues working on problems even when not consciously thinking about them. It is also known that with practice, a "feel" for the task - an intuition - can be developed. Explicitly thinking about every aspect of the task every time it is performed would reduce effectiveness dramatically. It follows that it is advantageous to move thinking processes to the unconscious mind, where the results can come together with a minimum of conscious effort and stress.
The distinction between Windows user mode and kernel mode comes to mind here. User mode is the CPU mode in which normal processes - personal apps and most OS components - function. Kernel mode accesses the hardware more or less directly and works in ways not visible to user-mode code. The team responsible for IIS (Internet Information Services, a web server) at Microsoft made the decision to move much of the functionality into kernel mode because it is so much faster, but not understandable from the conscious (user mode) side.
Practicing complex tasks eventually gets them into the mind's kernel mode. Though what happens there might not be expressible in user mode (in words), it has access to more resources and power.
I am really enjoying reading your blog, Ben! I hope you take this as a compliment - you have phrases and ways of explaining things that remind me of your mother!
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