Create While You’re Sleeping

“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”

Thomas Edison said that. Sounds a little “out there.”

But when I first heard that quote, I had one of those realizations that arrives when someone beautifully articulates something about your own mind that you could never quite put into words. I had been doing this by accident for years.

Here’s an example of how this worked for me last Wednesday:

For context, a week earlier I had told our Head of Design, Sam Stokes, that I would have a proposed update to our Summer Camp page done by March 10th.

March 10th came around and I had close to nothing. A creative block. Looking back now, I see that I had inadvertently constructed a levee to keep the flow of creative ideas out, while I caught up on emails, bounced from one meeting to the next, ran a couple of workshops, and settled into a new environment (my girlfriend and I had just arrived at a new stop on our nomadic adventure).

When you’re digging out from being buried, it’s hard to reach the ascension necessary for creative output.

Anyway, that night I sent Sam a message with some basic, technical updates, with none of the creative done. I closed my laptop and went to bed thinking about Summer Camp 2021.

Throughout this time where I was experiencing this creative block, I did my best to stay positive.

As I sat in bed, I envisioned myself and 100 other awesome people at the center of campus at Camp Scatico, ready to kick off the best weekend of the year. There’s a level of excitement in the air that I’ve never experienced before, as we gather as a group after over a year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic that kept us physically apart. Friends are reconnecting and new friendships are already forming. Hugs are sincere and plentiful. The feeling is one of pure joy and optimism. As folks settle in and I quiet them down to address the entire group for the first time…what would I say?

Then I fell asleep.

Four hours later, I woke up to a barrage of ideas rushing in. The subtle, practically accidental request to my subconscious had worked. The levee had broken. Suddenly it all became clear.

At first, I resisted. It’s 4am. “I have a lot to accomplish tomorrow,” I thought. “Let me store this in my memory bank and come back to it in the morning.”

My inner monologue continued.

“Ugh, but I have meetings all morning. Maybe I can carve out some time in the afternoon to revisit these ideas.

But what if I forget?? That has happened to me before.

I don’t want to wake up Alexis. Then again, she would understand.

But I need my sleeeep.”

After what must’ve been about 40 minutes of wrestling, I decided that I couldn’t go back to sleep unless I put these ideas on paper. I didn’t trust my memory bank with something this valuable. I needed to etch them in stone, aka write them down in my notebook.

This was important enough to warrant losing some sleep over.

So I quietly got up, opened the bedroom door and walked over to my desk. I felt around for my notebook and pen and started writing. I didn’t turn on the lights because I didn’t want my body to think we were up for the day. I wanted to codify my ideas and then go back to sleep.

I wrote profusely for about an hour and planned out the entire weekend. The message I wanted to convey on the website, the facilitators I wanted to invite, new fun activities to offer, how to price it, and the energy I wanted to bring.

I could barely see the paper, but I knew my 4-hours-from-now-self would be able to make out what I was saying. All of this can and likely will change, but the foundation is now there.

If you’re skeptical about the power of going to sleep with a request to your subconscious, don’t take my word for it. Though I did also give you the words of Thomas Edison, one of the most prolific creators in human history…

Here’s author John Steinbeck:

“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”

The Committee of Sleep is the title of a book by Harvard University psychologist and world-renowned dream specialist, Deirdre Barrett. In it — alongside examples of artists, musicians, writers, athletes, scientists, activists, and entrepreneurs who have leveraged the power of sleep to solve problems — Barrett says:

“Dreams are just thinking in a different biochemical state. In the sleep state, the brain thinks much more visually and intuitively.”

This reminds me of one of the main reasons why we travel at Third Nature— to expose ourselves to new perspectives outside of our usual day-to-day, inspiring new ways of thinking.

According to Barrett, we can do this without even leaving our homes. We can expose ourselves to new perspectives while we sleep.

Expanding on Barrett’s idea, scientific consensus suggests that your subconscious oversees the replaying and consolidating of memories while you sleep. Applying this to the idea of “sleeping on it” — by taking a request and letting your subconscious replay and consolidate memories around it, your awoken mind is able to see the problem from new angles and with added perspective.

Incubating a problem in your sleep is like bringing the problem to your personal or professional board of advisors. Except instead of hearing the opinions of others, you hear the opinions of different parts of your own brain.

Also, unlike in an advisory board meeting when someone’s phone starts ringing or the Zoom connection drops, during sleep there are no interruptions — at least not until your conscious mind decides it’s ready to wake up to take action on this influx of creativity.

If you’d like to try this at home:

First, put a pen and notebook next to your bed, ready to capture any bursts of creativity that rise to the surface after you’ve turned your mind off. This could happen in the first minute that you’re asleep, after a few hours, or first thing in the morning when you wake up.

Before you go to bed, think of a problem or question you’re currently working through.

Take a few minutes before you go to sleep to visualize yourself arriving at the solution. Not the solution itself — because if you knew that you wouldn’t need anything from your subconscious. Just envision your future self with the solution, ready to be delivered. Visualize the environment you’re in and who you’re surrounded by. Think about how you will feel.

As Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D. and Director of the Sleep and Dream Database says, “Go to sleep with the intention of opening yourself to whatever your dreaming imagination has to say in reply.”

Then close your eyes, and slowly drift to sleep.

I’d love to hear how it goes.

Have you ever tried giving your subconscious a request before bed? Any other tips you’d offer to others trying this at home?

And if you’re interested in our Adult Summer Camp Weekends, you can learn more here.