You have a problem to solve at hand. You start thinking about how to solve it. You end up wasting most of your mental energy on what would happen if you fail to solve it - or inversely how cool it would be if you solve it. This doesn’t happen in a concise, clear manner. It may not be a clear thought like, “what if I fail…”, it’s more of a fog that slightly distracts you, clouds your vision. It’s a feeling in your body that you don’t recognize as such. Many problems are very mechanical in their essence. “You” are nowhere to be found in the problem itself. But you keep inserting “yourself” in the scenario. It’s not a “pure” problem (a puzzle) anymore. A problem may be to move X from point A to point B efficiently. We make it into “I” have to move X from point A to point B - otherwise “consequences” vs reward. But the pure problem of moving X from A to B is very mechanical in nature. One can learn to recognize the ego fog and gently clear it and go back to the problem itself. That is “clarity”. Clear of the “ego fog”. “Clear thinking” sometimes mean “clear of yourself”.
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