Honestly I think about it a lot, the process of thinking, learning, mindset. I don't talk about it much because it's kind of complex, and would tend to turn into a book, but here are some really basic concepts, that you can try out.
Find effective techniques, and automate them. There's some mental line where you can repeat and ingrain a behavior process to the extent that it falls below your awareness. For example, if you drive a stick shift for a year, you no longer think about it. You don't spend time searching for the shift knob, you don't spend time remembering where the gears are. Your brain says gear 3, and your hand just automatically grabs the shifter and puts it in gear 3, without you having to divert any attention to that process.
This goes hand in hand with forming good habits, but I digress. Essentially, your brain can only handle so many things at once, and when you become so used to a task that you can do it without thinking, then you are basically free of that baggage. Everything is about speed. Almost anyone could accomplish almost anything given unlimited time, so in a sense, who achieves what is mostly a matter of becoming efficient enough to outpace competitors to a particular goal, whether that's creative, financial, industrial, or just winning a round of poker.
Efficiency and speed end up being the same stat over the marathon of life, you'll pull off some amazing sprint here and there, but overall, how much you move the needle is going to be based around how smart you are about making your time effective.
So I'm trying to give you an actionable way to start seeing some day to day results. First, find a part of your process that you can master completely. Something simple and clearly defined would be best. Let's say you are writing scripts, and you want to get the formatting right every time. Well, it has some mild complexity to it, but overall, it's not that difficult.
In this instance, you would
1. Take an active interest in learning everything about script formatting
2. Format your script correctly, painstakingly, slowly for weeks
3. Realize one day that when you hit a new scene your brain just autofills in all the formatting, and that you do it unconsciously while watching tv or talking on the phone
Now the mental energy that was previously spent on thinking about how to format something can be re-tasked to the main goal of composing the story.
In music, this same idea takes the form of muscle memory. If you are thinking about how to make a chord, your mind is not free to think about the next chord, and if you still have to consciously think about what that next chord should be, you can't dedicate your full attention to the expression that you are trying to put into the performance.
Most of the times that I've worked with people trying to help them improve some skill, the big obstacle is not a lack of talent or intelligence, but a lack of patience. Humans have amazing potential, and you just need to build some self confidence by mastering small goals that make the larger tasks more approachable.
Anything you do repeatedly will get easier, and you'll be less apprehensive about it. Something I often tell people is to practice completing things. You know how they say hindsight is 20/20? Give yourself opportunities to see your own methods in hindsight. Write a bad story, publish it, fell embarrassed about the parts that weren't that good. Loose a few arguments while defending your creative decisions. Write another one, carefully avoiding the pitfalls that became clear in hindsight from the previous work. Keep doing that, improving your approach, and the day will come that you are writing the whole story on autopilot, your mind completely free to compose, and the process of executing that composition effortless.
This is what a skill looks like before your brain automates it. No need to watch the whole thing.
This is what it looks like after. This guy is just thinking "left side, right side, center". You cannot move this fast when considering each movement.
The difference seen above comes from exactly the techniques I'm describing. Guy no 2 methodically automated anything that didn't actually require thought, now he's fast.
This absolutely applies to poker. If you have mastered the odds and tactics of the cards, and no longer have to think about them, you can for example focus your attention more on the other players.
Mindset is a huge topic, so I didn't even try to approach it here. Learn this one tactic for methodically improving speed at task x, and it will help you achieve in many areas.