Monday, October 12, 2009

Sleep On It

I've discovered something about myself that is very simple but very
powerful: problems get easier when I sleep on them. If I'm feeling
hopelessly stuck on something, I won't necessarily feel like that when I
sit down to work tomorrow, and must remember that and not despair. I think
this because of what creativity researchers refer to as incubation - the
thinking that happens when you're not working hard at it, while you're
walking around, taking a shower, doing your morning routine, etc. Also it
could be related to how my brain rehearses things during REM sleep - I'm
certainly better at presentations if I've had a sleep after memorizing it
and rehearsing it.

However it works, good reason to start as early as possible so as to allow
a good number of sleeps as I bang away on a problem. What's important is
to keep focus on just one major problem at a time, over a few days, and to
put in the work to get really and truly stuck on it - stuck hard. Only
then will this process get to work. Next, go to bed.