The ancient Greeks believed in the idea that it was the Muses who would come to artists and whisper new ideas to them. If an artist did not get any new ideas, it was believed that they had angered the Muses. To win the Muses back, the artist would perform a ritual such as making a pilgrimage to Mount Helicon or Mount Parnassus. There, they would ritually wash themselves in sacred waters like the Hippocrene Spring or the Castalian Spring to cleanse away their artistic stagnation and "drink" in fresh inspiration. Entire cities would hold grand artistic and musical festivals called Mouseia to celebrate these deities. If a community or a guild of actors felt they had lost their creative spark, they would organize these competitions. Poets, playwrights, and musicians would compete not for personal glory, but to showcase the beauty of the human mind as a collective offering to the Muses.

What the ancient Greeks called the Muses is not far from our idea of the subconscious brain. Over time, my belief in the Muses(subconscious/intuition) has increased. Of course, I still believe in thinking from first principles for solving problems, but for a lot of activities, such as picking a research direction, what direction to approach a problem, and even life decisions, to some extent, I follow what the Muses tell me.

First-principles thinking is great for rediscovering ideas. But in my personal observation, trying out ideas given by the Muses leads to interesting results/good insights. While first-principles thinking requires raw intellectual power, to attract the Muses, you need rituals.

I have found a lot of rituals here that work for me, but unfortunately, a ritual that works for me might not work for you.

1. Understanding a topic deeply and letting it "rest": Jim Keller explains this best.
2. Physical work: Gym, 3k run, etc. Just moving every day is important. Being physically exhausted helps me.
3. Environment: Is your environment demanding a lot of attention? I require the environment to have fewer surprises so that it doesn't scare away the Muses.
4. Deeply caring about the work: Only when the Muses find out that I deeply care about my work do they give me their great ideas. If they find out that I care about the end goal and not the process/work, they refuse to give me any good ideas :(
5. Another activity that you can laser focus on: For me, it's playing my guitar.

A good way to test if the Muses like you is by checking if they visit you while you are sleeping. There have been times when I have dreamt about whatever I was working on. This doesnt only include technical stuff. I have dreamt in music also while I was learning the guitar. But this happens only when you have put in a lot of work and developed a good intuition.