Funny enough my son can't dream. It took him awhile to figure out something was different, and he was jealous that other people got to experience something 'like VR' when they sleep. I tried testing him for aphantasia by asking him to describe mental pictures and he seemed not to have it. Personally I have very vivid dreams. The brain is an interesting thing, and it's funny how hard it is to communicate the internal workings.
I think solutions appears once I understand something about the problem. Solutions are then explored by my own mental compiler or interpreter, I can run them mentally and see where it fails or not. Problems are mostly a language problem, if I can describe the problem then it's not a problem anymore but almost the recipe to bake a solution. Complex problems appears when the sentence to describe them becomes too long (That's what it feels to me).
Having a focus problem doesn't make you unable to solve complex problems, but rather forces you to break down complex problems into blocks, or to use abstractions to describe solved parts of a complex problems, or something else of that type (again, that's what it feels to me).
Having a focus problem is like having too few RAM.
If I count the numbers of windows in my house, I can do it mentally, by flying through my house, but I can also fill my house mentally with water and swim around to count them (and I would almost feel the cold water on my face and body and hear what you usually hear when you are underwater and etc...). I can also go outside and count the windows of my neighbors, and take a walk in some place I saw one time in my life. I can visit Roma if I want and all of that stuff.
It's like I can trick my brain into thinking I am really in the situation I am thinking about.
It's different from reality, but I don't know how to explain why and how it is different.
I don’t remember the number of windows in my house, and I’m currently not in or near my house, but no problem — I simply wander through my house in my mind, and count the windows: 9.
So I cannot have aphantasia, right? How can I “visually” count the windows in my house without the capability to “see” in my mind?
But all those tests? I never really “see” that darn apple, at least not in the way that “awake-plus-photons” seeing works for me. Not even close. It’s more like seeing conceptually, or in the abstract.
Plus, I can relate to your comment. Maybe I have a focus problem, not an aphantasia problem?
But I can plan, design, and implement really complex software systems, so I cannot have a focus problem, right?