Sleep-thinking
By far my most creative time is when I’m trying to fall asleep, but can’t. My mind starts to wander, then latches on to something and forms a pretty coherent idea, often to the point where I feel compelled to get out of bed and shoot myself an email to make sure I don’t forget it. I would say probably half of my original ideas are born this way, which is kind of crazy considering it’s such a small percentage of my conscious life (especially since most nights I just fall asleep right away). Which brings up an interesting thought: what if you purposefully set aside a couple days a week where you went to bed well before you were tired in order to let your mind wander without distraction? It kind of ties back to the great Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) piece in the WSJ last year on why boredom leads to creativity and how diminishing boredom in society (due to folks always being plugged in) may lead to reduced innovation. After all, what’s more boring than lying in a dark silent room?
Sleep Debt and the Night Before Last Rule
I don’t understand how people can be productive while exhausted. The drop off for me is so dramatic, and there’s really nothing I can do other than slog through the day and get to sleep early that night. Even caffeine doesn’t help– drinking coffee will keep me awake, but it doesn’t help me focus at all. So being well rested is extremely important.
In college, I took Dr. William Dement’s famous Sleep and Dreams class where he explained his theory of “sleep debt.” He claims that everybody has a set number of required hours of sleep per night and missed sleep can accumulate indefinitely over time. For example, if you require 7 hours per night, but only get 5 hours of sleep every night for a week, you’ll have accumulated 14 hours of sleep debt and will not be fully rested until you make up these 14 hours of sleep on top of your normal requirements. His theory is compelling, and he certainly has far more knowledge on the topic than I do, but I’ve found that a similar but slightly different guideline works better for me: in short, the number one determinant of how tired you feel on a given day is not how much quality sleep you got the previous night, but how much you got the night before that. This means the main factor in how you feel today (Friday) is how well you slept on Wednesday night. That’s not to say that Thursday night’s sleep isn’t important too– it’s just a little less important.
For example, think about the most extreme case– pulling an all-nighter. External circumstances aside (such as a hangover), I’ll usually feel okay during the day, especially once I make it through lunch. For me, the lingering effects the second day after staying up all night tend to be worse than the immediate impact. Not sure if this is true for everyone. Also note that this isn’t terribly far from the sleep debt theory, especially since I tend not to string large numbers of bad sleep nights together, but I find it helpful to frame my sleep in this simpler context, especially when trying to plan my sleep around an event.
So if you’ve got a big test or competition coming up, don’t worry if you expect you’ll be too nervous to sleep the night before– just get a little extra shuteye the night before that.
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