The Need of Sleep in the Creative Process
The Problems Associated with Creativity and Sleep Deprivation
Practicing and enhancing the skill of creativity can be arduous and trivial when compared to other soft skills. Take into consideration the skill of communication, for example. With the intent to enhance one’s communication skills, one can directly approach individuals and spark conversations. Doing that repetitive task, and implementing a simple trials and tribulation method makes the path to development much clearer. Creativity, on the other hand, is vague in nature as it can applied to theoretically any situation and can be conjoined to various other skills, which introduces difficulties to its developmental path.
So, where should you start? Well, I decided to broaden my scope when thinking of approaches. What is needed for the development of most, if not all, skills? The answer is energy, which is attained from the bodily function of sleep. To extend upon that, one must be cognizant and attentive to their actions and approaches when attempting to develop any skill. For a human to be in that state of mind, the body needs to be well-rested.
On an average day, I get approximately 4-to-5 hours of sleep, which is considerably lower than the recommended 8 hours. This habit results in me waking up fatigued and enervated on most days. The lack of energy that exists due to sleep deprivation leads me to go through my days in a jaded phase. That phase prohibits my body, specifically my brain, from functioning at its highest potential, which inevitably reduces my creative thinking abilities.
The Plan to Increase Sleeping Hours and Enhance Creative Thinking
In order to elevate my creative abilities, the hours of sleep I receive on a nightly basis had to increase. To accomplish that task, I needed to reset my circadian rhythm (my sleep clock).
My first step was to have one horrendous day in which I didn’t sleep for 24-hours. This was done so that I can enter an extreme state of fatigue that will allow me to fall asleep at any time I preferred during the following day, thus leading to a sleep schedule reset. To pick the time that would allow me to average 8 hours of sleep on a consistent basis, I took into consideration my weekly schedule. Knowing that my earliest class on three out of my five school days begins at 10 A.M., I decided to ‘crash’ at 11 P.M. after my sleepless venture.
The day after that venture, I felt slightly better than I did during the 24-hour sleepless session but not as well as I would have liked to feel. A feeling of exhaustion was distinctly present, but this was a part of the procedure. Based on prior experiences, it usually takes approximately 2-to-3 days for my body to finally return to a state of normality in which I feel cognizant.
During the mornings and afternoons of the following two days, the feeling of fatigue was nearly nonexistent. I felt rejuvenated and better than I had felt since the starting of the spring semester. I was able to wake up without the appalling fatigue psychologically forcing me to return to my bed. Additionally, I had enough energy to get through my days without mentally begging myself to sleep at any possible moment.
Although the extra sleep did feel wonderful, I still needed to test if the procedure uplifted my creative abilities. To do that, I took into consideration my completion times for assignments and problems related to school. What came to be was that I was able to finish my regular assignments, such as homework, miniature projects, and study sessions, within quicker timeframes. The constant fatigue that was present within my average days was impeded, which allowed for the freedom of my creative expressions. Such instances of the expressions include thinking of greater schedules for my days that maximized my efficiency, and implementing a multitude of ideas into my solutions for my assigned work.
What’s Next?
Upon fixing my sleep schedule, my next plan is to research the various thought processes that lead to creative insights. I simply want to know what the thought processes are, how to obtain them, and how they creatively benefit individuals. Once I have finished my research, I plan on attempting to implement some of the processes into my own mind and seeing the results of such a plan.
