I use this method too for programming problems I would normally procrastinate on and offload to subconscious thinking.

Actually writing out all thinking steps helps with ironing out some wrong steps in my reasoning or going in circles due to having limited working memory.

I started doing this more rigorously after seeing how reasoning based AI does reasoning, because it seemed like a useful thinking technique.

These reasoning AI models help me think on a meta level about my own thinking and shows me tools I can use to improve it.

Great to see that I’m not alone in this!