5 ms·

One day I could not compile something. After fighting it several hours I decided to go sleep. A few minutes before waking up I dreamed that the solution was to

• nashequilibrium 7y ago
  Just had one of these moments two days ago, the only other thing that comes close is when I go for long walks.
  • mantap 7y ago
    I have many epiphanies on the toilet. I'm not sure if it's extra blood flowing to the brain or what but the throne seems to add extra IQ.
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      I noticed extra inspiration on bathroom breaks as well, but as a control I tried just getting up and walking outside and back, and that seemed to have the same effect for me.
      • WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
        There's something going on during that context switch. It feels like because all of the data about a problem is being unloaded into long term memory, when you return to the problem, you parse the entire data as once instead of adding to it in pieces. It almost feels like a puzzle except the second time looking at it, you're looking at the whole thing you've solved versus just the piece you last added.
        • egeozcan 7y ago
          I totally agree. When faced with a problem outside the comfort zone, sometimes the brain focuses too much on a part that may turn out to be irrelevant. Having a break and returning later usually works wonderfully to again see the big picture.
        • dwd 7y ago
          Maybe just walk through a doorway? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-through-doorway-makes-you-forget/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-throu... It would be an interesting experiment to think on a problem, then swap to a different office and see if that gives you a different perspective and insight.
        • dkersten 7y ago
          I feel Luke ta a mixture of context switch and some idle time/downtime. I find walks great for letting my thoughts drift and work through things, same goes for train journeys. I think perhaps as you say, the switch unloads the information into your subconscious and then the downtime let’s it get to work. I really liked Rich Hickeys talk on Hammock Driven Development which is basically this exact subject: load everything into your brain and then go snooze on a hammock while your mind gets to work.
    • ssttoo 7y ago
      Haha, interesting theory. For some it’s a cigarette break, for others (all of us?) it’s bathroom break, shower (showerthoughts, anyone?), nap, meditation. A break of any kind, if we may generalize.
    • meshenna 7y ago
      Likely it's simply because that's one of the few occasions in modern life when we're not being bombarded with external stimuli. A few minutes of silence and your brain goes: "Right, now's a good time to present this thing I've been working on." Same thing with showers.
      • Cshelton 7y ago
        it also has "occupying" part of your brain with something simple it is used to so it allows you to think of things that would be hard otherwise. If you simply sat in a chair and starred at a wall, you don't have the same effect as being in the shower, toilet, car, on a walk, etc. Also for many, simply sitting in a room listening to music can do this as well. It's like your brain needs to distract itself from... itself.
  • wildduck 7y ago
    For sure. It also help to go to park or nature or go for a swim!
  • yitchelle 7y ago
    When I used to bike commute to work, I had a similar effect. My commute to work is about 1 hour each way. On the way to work, ideas about work would pop into my brain. On the way home, ideas for home would pop up. Need to say that I don't really think about either work or home, they just pop up. Sadly that does not occur so much now that I am driving to work. I wonder if cycling vs sitting is the differentiater here.
• taneq 7y ago
  I was banging my head on a brick wall for an hour or so yesterday trying to figure out how a simple obvious thing wasn't working. The (also simple but slightly less obvious) setting that I'd forgotten to update came to me just as I was drifting off to sleep. This happens all the time.
• wildduck 7y ago
  That's the exact reason why we should have beds at work and not have regular working hours. People should just work and sleep whenever they want as long as they make meetings and project deadlines.
  • dvcrn 7y ago
    I for my part would never want to sleep at a bed in my office. I'd rather go home. I also live in Japan and a lot of places here have beds in the office but all it does is squeeze more time out of people and make them stay longer
    • wildduck 7y ago
      For sure going home is good. I'm just saying instead of staying awake and do bad work, it is better to just let people sleep when they need to.
  • mirimir 7y ago
    That works for me. In the last months of collecting data for my PhD thesis, I pretty much lived in the lab. This was basically biochemistry, so there was lots of "do this, wait some hours, do that, wait some hours, ...". So I just napped when I could. At night, on the couch in the break room. During the day, on the cot off the women's restroom. And conveniently, there was a shower for staff who cared for research animals. Now, living in a small apartment, my ~12 m^2 room includes desk, bed and storage.
  • sleepwalker 7y ago
    I work from home coding, sometimes went onsite. If I'm stuck on a problem with some code which a walk or short break didn't solve, a sleep would usually solve it, hence the saying "sleep on it". I'd even sleep during the day for half an hour or a few hours just to get the answer. I've also been awake for 80hrs doing a windows server upgrade which failed horribly but I put that down to the system being hacked. Felt like a zombie, but strong tea and hard water calcium rich near London so possibly also contains unmetabolized cocaine in, played its part in being able to stay awake for that long.
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• IIAOPSW 7y ago
  Imagine a future where we have engineered this effect to perfection, and even in your dreams you are expected to work. The effect would be an increase in the supply of labor, without an increase in the population. Wages would be depressed. There would be at least some people who have no reprieve, no moment to themselves, just so they can make it to the next paycheck and survive. 24 hour wage slaves. A human shaped cog in a capitalists machine. What a remarkable hell we engineer for ourselves.
  • TwoHeadedBeast 7y ago
    Or alternatively, we get all our work done in our sleep, and conscious time is devoted to leisure.
    • freejulian85 7y ago
      That's not how it works. There's always going to be someone willing to work in his sleep, plus 1 more hour of conscious time relative to the next guy.
• ASalazarMX 7y ago
  In Spanish we call it "consultar con la almohada" (to consult with the pillow). I think it's not sleeping per se that gives you answers, but breaking the cycle of frustration. You wake up rested and think more clearly.