People Are more Creative after Sleep, but Unaware of It
I always knew it! Sleep is essential in the process of finding good ideas. In Japan it’s already common to take a nap during working hours. So don’t be confused when you enter your colleague’s office tomorrow and find him resting his head on the table. He is probably just searching for a great idea!
Dr. Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and director of the Sleep Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, says, most people think of the sleeping brain as similar to a computer that has “gone to sleep” — it does nothing productive.
Wrong. Sleep enhances performance, learning and memory. Most unappreciated of all, sleep improves creative ability to generate aha!-moments and to uncover novel connections among seemingly unrelated ideas.
In other words, people are more creative after sleep, but are usually unaware of it. We have noticed this at our 2-day workshops, where a huge amount of inspirations and ideas is generated on the first day. After a highly stimulating day and evening the participants get some well-deserved rest during their sleep. On the second day they are always highly motivated to connect and combine ideas and to come up with new ones.
October 9th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Anne, where did you find this information? I want to write about it too!
Thanks for writing about this. It’s gotten me thinking.
October 17th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Katie,
I think it was mentioned in an article in the New York Times. Will look it up for you and send you the information. I am already looking forward to your article about that topic!