8 ms·

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck on some stupid thing I didn't understand and slamming my head against the paper/book/whatever didn't help. Again, a quick nap and I was good (or at least better than I was). Performative work is a disaster. I worked in a stuffy IT office of a company before I got my degree and became a software engineer. It took YEARS to deprogram performative work. I still hide when I take a nap. I suspect that if my current company found out I was sleeping on the job they'd still be upset with me. However, my output is so good the results speak for themselves. It would be difficult to fire me for napping.

conception 4y ago
You’ll like this - https://youtu.be/toWQ_BQF8Aw https://youtu.be/toWQ_BQF8Aw John Cleese on creativity
Ziggy_Zaggy 4y ago
Late to the party but going to post anyways... So, recent R&D into sleep tech has come along ways in the past 20 years. Basically research has shown that during nap/sleep cycles our brain moves around memories (from short-term to long-term and prioitization) and connections between memories. Also, this process optimizes information in the brain to make the access faster and more efficient thus providing opportunity for neuralogical advanced thought sessions given the datasets after a nap/sleep session. Some basic take aways include +20% memory capacity per 8-hour sleep cycle and longer un-interrupted access to memory collections. It's also been shown that it's possible to tag the day's memories and then prioritize them during the next nap/sleep session. Significant results have shown that groups that take 30-minutes nap have stronger memory capacity versus groups with no naps. The face of the R&D seems to be Matt Walker - PhD Brit with intense accent - you've been warned! TL:DR - The brains basically recharges AND rewires during nap/sleep sessions. Here's the links: podcast: The Matt Walker Podcast book: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316 https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...
mathieuh 4y ago
I'm the same except with guitar. I always keep a guitar next to my desk, and when I start getting frustrated or stuck with work I'll noodle around for 20 minutes. Usually I feel very refreshed after doing this. Working from home has been a godsend for me.
carlmr 4y ago
>When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck on some stupid thing I didn't understand and slamming my head against the paper/book/whatever didn't help. Again, a quick nap and I was good (or at least better than I was). I remember doing this, too. I would often nap 2-3 times a day in crunch time and sleep less during the night, solving many problems. I think the problem as you say is the performative part of work, and napping really doesn't look good in that sense. Since COVID WFH I often also nap instead of eating lunch, which is a double power boost, since a big lunch can make you almost comatose.
lqet 4y ago
The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which offered a constant stream of urgent TODO emails and tickets. I worked until exhaustion for 2 years, but did not get any work done.)
- marmot777 4y ago
  Many top novelists, scientists, engineers, etc., have come up with ideas doing something other than work. We’ve all had ideas at odd times and contexts. Sometimes good and occasionally outstanding ideas or solutions.
- jayde2767 4y ago
  I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.
  - dvergeylen 4y ago
    Slightly off-topic, but as a father of two (toddlers), I can relate to this. I have plenty of ideas but if I have (say) 15min available, my brain won't even start because it "knows" the next emergency / interrupt will probably occur within that time period. A bit sad I confess...
  - lqet 4y ago
    This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time, the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above everything. It felt like torture. A miserable experience. At some point, my partner mentioned something like "I sure hope you will smile again some time"; around the same time I noticed that I took immense risks in traffic, especially as a pedestrian. Getting up in the morning was extremely difficult. 2 weeks after I left, the ideas came flowing again (ironically for problems we struggled with for months and months at the company).
mellavora 4y ago
Churchill also saw the value of the nap: “Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces… Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one — well, at least one and a half,” -- The Gathering Storm
- andrepd 4y ago
  More to the point, there is evidence that a 10-20 minute nap at the middle of the day, such that you don't go into deep sleep, improves cognitive function and subjective alertness.
- gman83 4y ago
  If I was drinking whiskey for breakfast I'd probably need to take a nap in the afternoon as well.
  - sph 4y ago
    If you were not drinking coffee, perhaps you might as well. I wonder if our cultural addiction with caffeine, an effective sleep inhibitor, is the reason why napping and siestas feels so weird and exotic to our modern minds. "Oh you're from Italy? I heard they take lunchtime naps over there." Sadly only my grandma had such a luxury. Everybody else chugs coffee and is expected to work 9-18 without pause, like the rest of the Western world.
    - pyhtel 4y ago
      non-coffee drinker here, never been able to nap during the daytime. I reckon it's mostly just differences between people.
    - scruple 4y ago
      Aren't the Italians known for their coffee?
jerrygoyal 4y ago
> So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. I get it that it works but wonder what could be the logical explanation of this. I remember this method was also mentioned in the movie Turner & Hooch.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Not sure at all, but one thing that strikes me is when you’re purposely “thinking really hard,” you’re probably in a state akin to vigilance. You’re trying to assess ideas quickly and move to the next one. If you’re playing with legos, an idea can just sit there in the back of your mind and tumble about a little bit into different configurations and orientations. I think another commonality is physical activity: walking, playing, washing. There may be some chemical thing going on with muscle activity but also subjectively I have a suspicion that these sorts of activities are essentially pumping noise into your cognitive processes, helping divergent thinking, while also keeping your attention sufficiently occupied to achieve the “non-vigilant” posture toward those ideas.
- LocalH 4y ago
  My working hypothesis is that the conscious and subconscious mind cannot access the same part of the brain at the same time (sort of like bus conflicts). So, counterintuitively, to let your subconscious mind churn on a problem, you have to actively focus elsewhere. This, at least, seems to be how it works for me.
- alfor 4y ago
  When you are focused on a problem your left side of the brain take over (thinking in worlds and steps) When you relax, draw, daydream or sleep your left brain can take over and think in parallel, images, abstractions. When you dream the constraint on your consciousness (simulation) are lifted to allow more divergent scenario. That’s why dreams can be a bit crazy. It’s a bit like brainstorming on steroid, letting loose of more constraints.
sph 4y ago
> I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Many of the hard problems in my career have been solved while having a long warm shower in the middle of the work day. In general, my own productivity trick is understanding and leveraging the Eureka effect. Your subconscious is still working on the problem when your conscious mind is doing something else. Often, if pointed focus doesn't work, just leave it in the back burner to stew. Then wait for the proverbial light bulb to show you the way, out of nowhere. It never fails, yet I have never heard anyone mention this phenomenon. My empirical explanation is hard problems benefit from unrelated stimuli, so they're able to be approached from an oblique direction. In other words, to think out of the box, stop thinking and do something else.
deepGem 4y ago
Benjamin Franklin had this amazing idea of having ball bearings in his hand while solving and thinking about hard problems. The thinking would eventually make him fall asleep and as he fell into a slumber, the ball bearings would roll off his hands startling him up. It is at this precipice, the fine line between awake and asleep states that most of his ideas came to life. He would start penning down his ideas in this state. So it worked then, it works now. A 20 to 30 minute nap during the work day has a ton of benefits, including stress reduction. I don't know why it is frowned upon. I have fallen asleep many times at my desk and have been made fun of, but who gives a damn. I would rather be stress free and have some good ideas come about.
- arthurofbabylon 4y ago
  Leveraging the hypnagogic state. If anyone is interested, the yoga tradition has extensively developed this technique – it’s called Yoga Nidra.
  - texasbigdata 4y ago
    It’s pandemic popular as “non sleep deep rest” if you want to try it by following a YouTube guide. Great nap replacement for when you’re too wired to fully fall asleep.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  My guess is it's frowned upon because there's a difference in choosing to take a nap, and needing to take a nap. The latter is associated with aging and physical decline.
nestorD 4y ago
During my PhD, I had a friend famous for having a pillow on his desk. He would take a nap everyday and went on to finish his PhD 6 months earlier than all prognostications and with some great ideas.
willturman 4y ago
Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey [1] is a presentation that dives into why taking a step back from the immediacy of a problem often leads to clarity. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
- slifin 4y ago
  The urge to invoice a Hammock for my home office to my employer
  - jereees 4y ago
    Just buy it. Look at it as an investment for your future mental health.
kubota 4y ago
This! The human mind never fails to amaze me, so often the solution to a work problem pops into my head right after waking up, without even remembering what I was dreaming about.
a_e_k 4y ago
At the grad school that I went to, senior grad students were offered a chance to move out of the lab and into a private "dissertating office" as they became available. With a couch I could nap on, an incredible window view to gaze out from, and a door I could shut for focus work, it was amazingly productive for finishing my dissertation. Those few months were the only time that I've ever had a private office and to this day I still rather miss it. (And most of my favorite papers came about from ideas that I'd had while on vacation.)

conception 4y ago

You’ll like this - https://youtu.be/toWQ_BQF8Aw https://youtu.be/toWQ_BQF8Aw John Cleese on creativity

Ziggy_Zaggy 4y ago

Late to the party but going to post anyways... So, recent R&D into sleep tech has come along ways in the past 20 years. Basically research has shown that during nap/sleep cycles our brain moves around memories (from short-term to long-term and prioitization) and connections between memories. Also, this process optimizes information in the brain to make the access faster and more efficient thus providing opportunity for neuralogical advanced thought sessions given the datasets after a nap/sleep session. Some basic take aways include +20% memory capacity per 8-hour sleep cycle and longer un-interrupted access to memory collections. It's also been shown that it's possible to tag the day's memories and then prioritize them during the next nap/sleep session. Significant results have shown that groups that take 30-minutes nap have stronger memory capacity versus groups with no naps. The face of the R&D seems to be Matt Walker - PhD Brit with intense accent - you've been warned! TL:DR - The brains basically recharges AND rewires during nap/sleep sessions. Here's the links: podcast: The Matt Walker Podcast book: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316 https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...

mathieuh 4y ago

I'm the same except with guitar. I always keep a guitar next to my desk, and when I start getting frustrated or stuck with work I'll noodle around for 20 minutes. Usually I feel very refreshed after doing this. Working from home has been a godsend for me.

carlmr 4y ago

>When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck on some stupid thing I didn't understand and slamming my head against the paper/book/whatever didn't help. Again, a quick nap and I was good (or at least better than I was). I remember doing this, too. I would often nap 2-3 times a day in crunch time and sleep less during the night, solving many problems. I think the problem as you say is the performative part of work, and napping really doesn't look good in that sense. Since COVID WFH I often also nap instead of eating lunch, which is a double power boost, since a big lunch can make you almost comatose.

lqet 4y ago

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which offered a constant stream of urgent TODO emails and tickets. I worked until exhaustion for 2 years, but did not get any work done.)

marmot777 4y ago
Many top novelists, scientists, engineers, etc., have come up with ideas doing something other than work. We’ve all had ideas at odd times and contexts. Sometimes good and occasionally outstanding ideas or solutions.
jayde2767 4y ago
I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.
- dvergeylen 4y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but as a father of two (toddlers), I can relate to this. I have plenty of ideas but if I have (say) 15min available, my brain won't even start because it "knows" the next emergency / interrupt will probably occur within that time period. A bit sad I confess...
- lqet 4y ago
  This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time, the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above everything. It felt like torture. A miserable experience. At some point, my partner mentioned something like "I sure hope you will smile again some time"; around the same time I noticed that I took immense risks in traffic, especially as a pedestrian. Getting up in the morning was extremely difficult. 2 weeks after I left, the ideas came flowing again (ironically for problems we struggled with for months and months at the company).

mellavora 4y ago

Churchill also saw the value of the nap: “Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces… Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imaginations. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one — well, at least one and a half,” -- The Gathering Storm

andrepd 4y ago
More to the point, there is evidence that a 10-20 minute nap at the middle of the day, such that you don't go into deep sleep, improves cognitive function and subjective alertness.
gman83 4y ago
If I was drinking whiskey for breakfast I'd probably need to take a nap in the afternoon as well.
- sph 4y ago
  If you were not drinking coffee, perhaps you might as well. I wonder if our cultural addiction with caffeine, an effective sleep inhibitor, is the reason why napping and siestas feels so weird and exotic to our modern minds. "Oh you're from Italy? I heard they take lunchtime naps over there." Sadly only my grandma had such a luxury. Everybody else chugs coffee and is expected to work 9-18 without pause, like the rest of the Western world.
  - pyhtel 4y ago
    non-coffee drinker here, never been able to nap during the daytime. I reckon it's mostly just differences between people.
  - scruple 4y ago
    Aren't the Italians known for their coffee?

jerrygoyal 4y ago

> So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. I get it that it works but wonder what could be the logical explanation of this. I remember this method was also mentioned in the movie Turner & Hooch.

ethanbond 4y ago
Not sure at all, but one thing that strikes me is when you’re purposely “thinking really hard,” you’re probably in a state akin to vigilance. You’re trying to assess ideas quickly and move to the next one. If you’re playing with legos, an idea can just sit there in the back of your mind and tumble about a little bit into different configurations and orientations. I think another commonality is physical activity: walking, playing, washing. There may be some chemical thing going on with muscle activity but also subjectively I have a suspicion that these sorts of activities are essentially pumping noise into your cognitive processes, helping divergent thinking, while also keeping your attention sufficiently occupied to achieve the “non-vigilant” posture toward those ideas.
LocalH 4y ago
My working hypothesis is that the conscious and subconscious mind cannot access the same part of the brain at the same time (sort of like bus conflicts). So, counterintuitively, to let your subconscious mind churn on a problem, you have to actively focus elsewhere. This, at least, seems to be how it works for me.
alfor 4y ago
When you are focused on a problem your left side of the brain take over (thinking in worlds and steps) When you relax, draw, daydream or sleep your left brain can take over and think in parallel, images, abstractions. When you dream the constraint on your consciousness (simulation) are lifted to allow more divergent scenario. That’s why dreams can be a bit crazy. It’s a bit like brainstorming on steroid, letting loose of more constraints.

sph 4y ago

> I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Many of the hard problems in my career have been solved while having a long warm shower in the middle of the work day. In general, my own productivity trick is understanding and leveraging the Eureka effect. Your subconscious is still working on the problem when your conscious mind is doing something else. Often, if pointed focus doesn't work, just leave it in the back burner to stew. Then wait for the proverbial light bulb to show you the way, out of nowhere. It never fails, yet I have never heard anyone mention this phenomenon. My empirical explanation is hard problems benefit from unrelated stimuli, so they're able to be approached from an oblique direction. In other words, to think out of the box, stop thinking and do something else.

deepGem 4y ago

Benjamin Franklin had this amazing idea of having ball bearings in his hand while solving and thinking about hard problems. The thinking would eventually make him fall asleep and as he fell into a slumber, the ball bearings would roll off his hands startling him up. It is at this precipice, the fine line between awake and asleep states that most of his ideas came to life. He would start penning down his ideas in this state. So it worked then, it works now. A 20 to 30 minute nap during the work day has a ton of benefits, including stress reduction. I don't know why it is frowned upon. I have fallen asleep many times at my desk and have been made fun of, but who gives a damn. I would rather be stress free and have some good ideas come about.

arthurofbabylon 4y ago
Leveraging the hypnagogic state. If anyone is interested, the yoga tradition has extensively developed this technique – it’s called Yoga Nidra.
- texasbigdata 4y ago
  It’s pandemic popular as “non sleep deep rest” if you want to try it by following a YouTube guide. Great nap replacement for when you’re too wired to fully fall asleep.
SamPatt 4y ago
My guess is it's frowned upon because there's a difference in choosing to take a nap, and needing to take a nap. The latter is associated with aging and physical decline.

nestorD 4y ago

During my PhD, I had a friend famous for having a pillow on his desk. He would take a nap everyday and went on to finish his PhD 6 months earlier than all prognostications and with some great ideas.

willturman 4y ago

Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey [1] is a presentation that dives into why taking a step back from the immediacy of a problem often leads to clarity. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

slifin 4y ago
The urge to invoice a Hammock for my home office to my employer
- jereees 4y ago
  Just buy it. Look at it as an investment for your future mental health.

kubota 4y ago

This! The human mind never fails to amaze me, so often the solution to a work problem pops into my head right after waking up, without even remembering what I was dreaming about.

a_e_k 4y ago

At the grad school that I went to, senior grad students were offered a chance to move out of the lab and into a private "dissertating office" as they became available. With a couch I could nap on, an incredible window view to gaze out from, and a door I could shut for focus work, it was amazingly productive for finishing my dissertation. Those few months were the only time that I've ever had a private office and to this day I still rather miss it. (And most of my favorite papers came about from ideas that I'd had while on vacation.)