Sleeping on Problems Can Help You Solve Them
Sometimes the answers to the very problems keeping you up at night can be found in your dreams while sleeping. One experiment found that 50% of subjects asked to imagine a problem they were trying to solve before going to bed actually dreamt about it — and 70% of those who did dream about their problem felt they woke up with a solution.
German psychobiologist Otto Loewi first dreamt about the experiment that would eventually prove his theory on the biochemical nature of the transmission of nerve impulses and win him a Nobel Prize.
But how can this happen? Dreaming is a subconscious playground of the mind, allowing us to explore complex scenarios without the constraints and distractions imposed by waking reality. As we dream, our brains consolidate information gathered during the day and can form connections between seemingly unrelated concepts and ideas. These associations can give rise to innovative solutions to problems that may have eluded us during our waking hours. In an altered state of consciousness, our minds synthesize novel perspectives that may produce profound insights. The lack of censorship, inhibition and linear thinking in dream states may allow for a more creative problem-solving processes — and facilitate the discovery of answers to our most challenging conundrums.
So the next time you need to find an answer to a pressing problem, give it little snooze and see what happens. What have you got to lose? Keep a journal close at hand while sleeping so you can quickly jot down the revelations from your reveries — unless you have that dream where you show up to your final exam naked when you haven’t studied. Oh, you’ve never had that one? Um … never mind.
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