Besso that he was giving up the effort of resolving the conflict between constant light speed and Galileo relativity after 10 years of wondering and 1 year intense struggle. He told Besso in the morning that "I am giving up". On the way back from the office Einstein explained his trouble and all of a sudden he realized something. The next morning he told Besso that he completely solved the problem.Then in a week he finished the SR paper in which he cited nobody but Besso for several valuable suggestions. In fact, Besso was a sounding board. Einstein, while talking, realized from subconscious that time has to be relative.
The story is that one has to saturate his mind with all possible logic consequences and then the parallelly working subconscious similarity finding mechanism could produce the last logic step.
Bruce Lee would agree.