Given the title, you’d be surprised to hear that I am not talking about myself. Sorry, obligatory self-deprecating joke to self-handicap and inoculate myself against possible future negative feedback. Wow, that was a lot of self-disclosure.
Really, we’re gonna talk about sleeping. Sleeping is a difficult thing to study. Kind of like whales. Both sleep and whales are difficult to study primarily because it is hard to see them. Of those whales or sleeping people that we see, we must ask are they representative of all whales and sleeping people.
For instance, when thinking about your sleep, you generally only notice the instances where something weird happened.
- Couldn’t fall asleep.
- Went to bed, woke up what felt like 5 minutes later, and a whole night had passed.
- Woke up a 4 am, did your morning routine, got ready and found out it was 4 am
- Sleepwalking
- Sleep talking
- Waking yourself up with a snore or snort
- That weird leg kick or sleep jerk right as you transition to sleep which is often called a sleep start or sleep jerk.
The list goes on and on. All of those are interesting and to some extent unknown. Often times people ask why. That’s too easy of a question. I think we should ask how.
Think like a psychological researcher. How would you study those things if you don’t know when they are going to happen? Further, where would you study them? If you study them in the person’s bedroom, there wouldn’t be the necessary monitoring and brain scanning machines. If you were to study someone in a controlled environment, then maybe introducing those machines might affect their sleep pattern and ruin the things you are trying to study.
Sleep is one of the great unknowns. While psychologists know a lot of what happens between the sheets, they don’t know what happens between the ears. Of course, by saying that, I was trying to use a clever turn of phrase. Of course psychologists know quite a bit of what happens between the ears if we are talking about the brain. But if we are talking about the mind, well that’s like trying to describe what an invisible person looks like.
Here are some things we do know. Most of us should get about 8 hours of sleep. In that 8 hours, we go through a repeating cycle of sleep states. That jerk or leg kick happens at the transition between stages (Walker, 2017). That cycle happens about every 90 minutes. The assumption is that sleep is when the brain cleans itself. For 16 hours, usually more, the brain is doing an uncountable number of things using an uncountable number of synapses using an uncountable number of neurons and glial cells. While all stages are important, it is the period of time that we dream that is usually considered the most important. But, that is a bit inaccurate. That’s like saying which member of the band is the most important. While REM sleep is like the lead singer, all of the stages of sleep are necessary.
REM sleep is when we have dreams and it happens most frequently towards morning. Even though the 90-minute sleep cycle which includes periods of REM starts as soon as we go to sleep at night, those early periods of REM are quite short. Throughout the night those periods of REM get longer. So if we were not under the hateful control of the dictatorial alarm clock, (sorry for the editorializing) we would have a long REM period right before we wake up.
That time, that REM period right before we wake up, is a rich, fertile field where ideas grow. Let me let that metaphor lie fallow for a bit while we dip into brain waves and states of consciousness. If you are reading this, your brain is producing more Beta waves than the other types. When you are deeply asleep your brain is producing more Delta waves. When you are dreaming, guess what brain waves dominate? Well if you have been following The Creativity Algorithm, then you know it is Alpha waves.
So, right before you wake up, provided you are sleeping in, you will usually have a nice, long uninterrupted period of groovy, dreamy alpha waves. To go back to the metaphor, this is when all kids of thoughts sprout up. It is not a well-kept farm with neat rows of crops. For most of us, it is an untouched jungle where nearly anything can grow. I am certainly not saying we should clear the jungle, uproot the stumps, and turn it into a corporate farm.
I don’t think it is possible and if you tried, I think your mind would push back. Have you ever seen the movie Avatar? The evil, over-structured corporation attempts to master and control the beautiful untouched paradise for profit. I suggest that would be like trying to control your dream state. Yes, I am familiar with lucid dreaming and I think that it is fascinating and generally healthy. Notice that the goal of most lucid dreaming is to explore and experience. Just like in the movie Avatar, scientists were fine exploring. It was when they started exploiting that things got bad.
Now that I have laid out disclaimers about not trying to control your dreaming alpha state, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t interact or play with it. To go back to the field/jungle/growing things metaphor, I think you should plant seeds. Plant the seeds of the good ideas you want to have and then see what pops up during REM sleep.
A lot of folks say that they do not dream during the night. They do, it’s just that they are not aware of it any more than they are aware of the plants around them growing. Everyone dreams, every night. In fact, everyone dreams every night, several times per night. Just because you don’t see them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Don’t believe me? How many whales are in the oceans right now? What if we said each ocean is like a stage of sleep? Just as there are different sizes of oceans there are different sizes of REM stages throughout the night. What if I continued with this metaphor and suggested that counting how many whales that are constantly moving between oceans is like counting dreams that oftentimes blend into each other.
In this post, I have talked about whales, dreams, and the movie Avatar. Did you know that the idea for the movie Avatar came to James Cameron in a dream? Maybe you did. But I am 100% sure that you didn’t know that the idea for this post came to me as I was waiting in like for the Avatar ride in Disneyworld. If you have been following The Creativity Algorithm, that shouldn’t surprise you. I had, at one point in my life, heard that little tidbit about James Cameron and Avatar. Then in a moment of relaxation on vacation with my family when I was daydreaming, the idea for this post/episode was assembled by my unconscious and popped into my conscious like a seedling absorbing nutrients and producing fruit.
Am I simply citing one example from my life to prove that The Creativity Algorithm works? No. I’ve seen the pattern countless times. The process brings the product. You just have to trust the process.
Good ideas often happen when we are day dreaming (Østby, 2023). Which is a type of relaxed engagement. And daydreaming and night-dreaming are much more similar than people think. Ideally, we want to adopt an attitude of letting go of the day’s stresses and letting our unconscious come out to play an explore. That is why we want to get into a groovy, relaxed alpha state in the day and play with mental puzzles called sophisms to invite a good idea.
Take Away: Do an internet search for famous ideas that came as a result of a dream. Maybe most of them came from a lucky accident. But, I bet that there is just as much preparation as luck. So, here’s a big ask. For one week, every night, write down what you want to dream about. I bet you will. That doesn’t mean that you will notice that you did. Maybe, just maybe you will right before you wake up. Try it.
Spreading the Thoughts: Ask a friend or coworker if they have ever had a good idea in a dream. Then of course, ask them about what made that night of sleep different. If they don’t know, tell them about The Creativity Algorithm.
Next Post: Mulch Barrier
For more information on how to help yourself and people in your organization learn how to access solutions more regularly, please go to:
Website: joeswope-publicspeaker.com
Youtube: youtube.com/@joeswope-publicspeaker
Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/joe-swope
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/joe-swope-speaker
References
Østby, H. (2023). The Key to Creativity: The Science Behind Ideas and How Daydreaming Can Change the World (M. Bagguley, Trans.). Greystone Books Limited.
Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Scribner.
The Creativity Algorithm 
Leave a comment