What it is
Clarence Birdseye noticed that trout caught while ice-fishing tasted remarkably fresh when thawed. That observation became a decade of experiments, and eventually frozen food as we know it. Steven Johnson calls this a “slow hunch”: not a flash of insight, but an idea that develops gradually, shaped by many unrelated experiences, and stays alive because someone keeps feeding it.
How it shows up for me
Some of my best projects started as a sentence in a notes app years earlier. I’ve stopped deleting old hunches. I just let them sit, and visit them now and then.