Humans Are Pattern Recognition Machines

So my girlfriend is writing a thesis paper, and her research style involves writing discrete facts on post-it notes, sticking them to her desk, and referring to them as she writes. But for this paper, she has ~260 post-it notes, and so she had to plaster them all over the walls of her living room, with research papers spread across the floor, and traipse about through the room from fact to fact looking for connections. It reminded me so much of John Nash in his schizophrenic "code breaking" episodes that I had to laugh, but worry a little on the inside at the same time...

The point is, our minds are designed to recognize patterns, so you don't have to be crazy to spread all your work out and analyze it from a high level.