Your dreams won’t make you rich.
How plundering our dreams for business innovation leaves us destitute.
Dreams promise innovation. We’ve been told they’re the secret portal to masterpieces. The door to multi-million-dollar business ideas. From the Theory of Relativity to Twilight, dreams are the creator.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after a nightmare about a mechanical man. Elias Howe dreamed of cannibals waving pointed sticks. In the morning he invented the sewing machine. Even in the Bible, Joseph (of the amazing technicolor dream-coat) was blessed by dreams that led him to greatness.
Google famously burst into being when a 22-year graduate dreamed he had downloaded the whole internet. Larry Page’s night-time vision formed the basis of an algorithm. The code went on to underlie the (once) most popular website in the world.
“When a really good dream shows up, grab it!” — Larry Page
Look at the gifts bequeathed on the lucky sleepers throughout history.
Naturally, many of us are keen to put our own dreams to work.
Science has proven a link between dreaming and innovation. And given us a way to control it.
In the last few decades neuroscience techniques have advanced rapidly. Now we can delve objectively into the sleeping brain. The link between dreaming and innovation has become a little clearer.
Ten years ago, researchers noticed something strange about project managers in high-tech organizations. Some of them had particularly creative and emotionally charged dreams.
Employees who dreamed seemed to deliver better business innovation.
Correlations like this one always demand careful unpicking. The researchers couldn’t be sure that it was the dreams themselves that were causing the innovation.
There was no evidence that the project managers were receiving nighttime direction on how to build software.
The scientists instead offered a more cautious explanation.
People who are open to new experiences and less directive in their approach to life, dream more often. This kind of manger is also more likely to allow their teams space to experiment. It was this flexibility that resulted in the commercial innovation.
Indeed, we’ve known for a long time that the personality trait of openness is a critical determinant in how someone dreams.
Nevertheless, it was a bold step forwards to tie the intimate life of our dreams to business KPIs.
Fast forward to 2023. Psychologists are now even able to plant creativity-driving dreams in sleeping brains.
In May, Harvard Medical School researchers discovered a way to nudge sleepers into dreaming about a specific topic. They exploited the drowsy point right before sleep onset (known as N1).
Their new protocol finally gave us control over our dreams’ delivery of creativity.
The scientists played sleepers a voice saying, “Remember to think of a tree.” This worked. On average, 70.3% of the dream reports included a tree. Critically, upon waking, creativity in tree-related tasks improved.
If our ambition is to recruit our dreams to get busy on problem-solving whilst we sleep, we’re very close to the finish line.
If our goal was to recreate the spark of illumination that uncovered, amongst other things, the structure of DNA, we might be disappointed.
It’s time to pause and examine our desire for control.
I’m a dream-fanatic and psychologist. These scientific advances should delight me. Instead, the intrusion seems sacrilegious.
Perhaps I’m jaded from the relentless march of hustle culture. I’m growing suspicious of our unquestioning worship of financial value creation.
Humanity has been debating the nature of dreams for millennia. And won’t stop any time soon. In the midst of this conversation, there is one thing the neuroscientists, the religions, and the psychoanalysts agree on.
Dreams are complex and beautiful happenings.
When did our dreams mutate from miracle to resource?
Our culture is obsessed with productivity.
In the 16th century, England became protestant. Much of the Western world has remained this way since. The US has been mostly protestant since the first European settlers arrived. One of the central beliefs of this kind of Christianity is the Protestant Work Ethic.
Working hard is a sign of moral character. Failing to do so is laziness, and a sin. It’s not fashionable to talk about sin anymore. But we continue to place productive accomplishment at the center of our existence.
Every year, in September, villages across Britain celebrate Harvest Festival. The elderly parishioners of my childhood church get busy. I grew up watching their generous collection of tinned food. Passing it on to the local less fortunate.
No one commented on the healthy but job-less family who accepted our offerings. At least not publicly. The sweet old ladies were too polite and English for that. But we all knew, and we resented their life of leisure.
Today we’re still captivated by the performance of productivity.
It’s not surprising we looked disapprovingly at the wastefulness of sleep. Then rallied our efforts to mine it for monetizable creativity.
We were foolish to think our subconscious would obey.
Whether you ascribe to the activation-synthesis model or thank Morpheus for your visions. You know that dreams don’t belong the waking mind. They won’t live in the realm of Monday morning to-do-lists. They don’t care about you innovation program deadlines.
Thankfully, some parts of our world, some parts of ourselves, are beyond capitalism.
Our ancestors didn’t make these demands of dreams.
More than 1500 years before I sat, ten-years old and bored, in a church pew, Saint Augustine arrived at the shores of England. Sent by the Pope to enlighten the savage Celts. Despite the best efforts of the Christians, echoes of paganism haunt the island.
There’s an odd British folktale I heard once, left over from the times before. It wasn’t written down until 1553 but it's much older than that. It’s persisted in my homeland, in one form or another, since the first century. It’s called The King o’ the Cats.
An old man is dozing in a graveyard. He dreams he sees eight back cats walking upright. They are solemnly carrying a velvet draped coffin.
Leading the procession is a ninth cat, the biggest of them all. The ninth cat approaches the old man and whispers “Tell Tom Tildrum that Tim Toldrum’s dead.”
Upon waking, the old man, having no idea who Tom or Tim are, returns home to his wife to seek advice. He finds her sitting by the fire with their own purring house cat. He recounts his story.
When he reaches the conclusion, the house cat startles. It exclaims “What — old Tim is dead! then I’m the King o’ the Cats!” With that, the house cat rushes up the chimney and was never seen again.
This isn’t a particularly satisfying tale. There isn’t a moral message or a snippet of wisdom to pocket.
This isn’t the kind of dream that launches the next Google.
Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a smash West-End musical about Joseph’s biblical dreams. Tickets for King o’ the Cats would not sell-out in quite the same way.
Despite its refusal to be productive, The King o’ the Cats has stubbornly clung on. Passed down over fires, in pubs, nurseries, and now digitally to you. A squatter in the limited space of your hippocampus.
Generations of storytellers have sensed there is something of value in these words. Even if they can’t quite be sure what it is. Perhaps its purpose was simply in its sharing. Driving us to huddle amongst friends and argue over its meaning.
An excuse to extravagantly and selfishly waste time.
We’ve collectively agreed to allow King Tom the privacy of mystery. In return, he’s squirreled something, as yet undefined, through the centuries.
Dreams offer something more valuable than money.
That’s the truth about dreams, really. The self-help gurus and scientists might not be ready to admit it just yet.
Dreams aren’t obedient dogs. They won’t entertain you with tricks on command. They’re not your best friend. Or your reliable work colleague.
In an age of project plans, and straight lines, and endless trudging progress, dreams are rebellion.
A much-needed reminder that we don’t need to be useful in order to be valuable.
Dreams are the nonchalant kitten purring by the fire. Dreams are the Cheshire Cat, irritating Alice with a knowing grin and nonsense.
Dreams might guide you, but they won’t serve you. You’ll need to learn to be grateful for the hazy half glimpses of genius.
In music one doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition… Same way in dancing, you don’t aim at one particular spot in the room… The whole point of dancing is the dance. — Allan Watts
Anyone who has ever tried to coax a cat into an embrace knows the beauty is in the boundaries.
