That sounds like he was being figurative. He probably meant that he got ideas while working.

Every morning, I get up at 5, and take a 5K walk. During that time, I tend to "triage" the day ahead, and often solve problems that were vexing me, the night before.

Part of my walk is around a local high school track. There is a small flock of killdeer birds, that hang out there, and I guess they give me the ideas I have, as they often come to me, at that point in my walk.

I enjoyed this part:

> One story has it that when Cray was asked by management to provide detailed one-year and five-year plans for his next machine, he simply wrote, "Five-year goal: Build the biggest computer in the world. One year goal: One-fifth of the above." And another time, when expected to write a multi-page detailed status report for the company executives, Cray's two sentence report read: "Activity is progressing satisfactorily as outlined under the June plan. There have been no significant changes or deviations from the June plan."