[throwuxiytayq]

> Whenever I have a problem thats hard and involves numbers and i'm stuck I just remember to ask "what if the numbers were smaller? what do we do then?"

I think you underestimate the amount of internalized understanding of the "unblock yourself on a difficult problem by solving a simpler version of it" strategy that you possessed or unlocked at learn-time which allowed you to notice its effectiveness. Isn't the sentence more of an easily-retrievable mnemonic for a concept that's much more complicated (than just the information transferred by language) and requires a particular background to recognize how useful it is?