When you’re really stuck sometimes the most counterintuitive response can be most helpful - sleep on it, take a nap, doze off. The solutions may be residing in your unconscious mind and need some time to come through.
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When you’re really stuck sometimes the most counterintuitive response can be most helpful - sleep on it, take a nap, doze off. The solutions may be residing in your unconscious mind and need some time to come through.
What are the next two letters in this series - O, T, T, F, F…..? Sleep pioneer, William C. Dement, set this challenge to 500 students, with an instruction to think about the problem for 15 minutes before going to sleep and to write down any dreams they remembered as they awoke.
Do you struggle to get out of bed in the morning? If so, it could be your advantage. Cognitive neuroscientist Mark Jung-Beeman suggests that when we’re stuck on a difficult problem, one of the best things we can do is set our alarm clock to go off a few minutes early.
If we asked 100 people, how many do you think mull things over or sleep on things as part of how they routinely work? What’s your best guess?
Do you ever feel frustrated when you doze off when you don’t want to? But, what if dozing in and out of sleep was actually a helpful state to be in? What if we gave into it a bit more often (as long as we’re in a safe space and not operating machinery!).
At the onset of sleep there’s a state we enter called ‘hypnagogia’, which we experience as being half-asleep, half-awake. Charles Dickens talked of this as a time that enables the mind to “ramble at its pleasure.”
Aristotle, Einstein and Salvador Dali all made use of the 'micro-nap'; the tiniest of moments between being awake and asleep.
Dali would sit in his armchair with a key in his hand hovering above a plate and doze off. The idea was that just before falling into deep sleep, the key would fall and loudly land on the plate and he would wake with a sudden jolt of inspiration*.
People who take naps are twice as likely to solve complex problems than non-nappers*!
10 to 20 minutes is the perfect amount of time to nap to measurably boost your energy and alertness. NASA found that pilots who napped for 26 minutes improved their task performance by 34% and alertness by 54%, compared to pilots who didn't nap**.
Creativity can appear mysterious. It's impossible to force ourselves to be creative and have ah-ha! moments because so much of what the brain does behind the scenes doesn't involve our direct attention or control. But, what if something as simple as briefly drifting into sleep could help?