How to Write in Your Sleep

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“Sleep,” said Shakespeare, “rock thy brain.”

Study after study shows it, a good night’s sleep makes for a sharper, more productive mind. And yet, your average worker gets 6 hours and 55 minutes. With half of those saying they were doing work up until an hour before going to bed.

A badge of honor worth wearing?

Hardly. Those hard-working types, it turns out, are hardly working… or at least, hardly working at true capacity. Despite delusions to the contrary.

Scientists have yet to figure out how sleep restores your brain function. But they have no doubt that it does. So ye sleep-deprived, if we get a lot done now… imagine what we could accomplish well-rested.

Maybe because I’ve always been an undisciplined sleeper myself, I’ve both collected and written plenty about sleep and how it fits into a creative life calling.

Rather than try to thread them all together, let me just hit you with a burst of some of what I’ve got on hand…

* Per Popular Science, when you zonk out after just learning something, you’re more likely to wake up with an even stronger memory of what you learned than when you went to bed. Why? REM sleep, when your eyes are darting under your eyelids, somehow reinforces and sorts the information. And non-REM sleep gives your neurons a chance to repair a day’s worth of free-radical damage.

* Per the same article, go jogging. Not only does it lead to deeper sleep at night, which is just as key to whatever the brain does while you sleep, but it also builds brain cells faster. In one 1999 study, lab rats had double the number for new brain cells after running (no, I don’t know how they got the little sneakers on their little rat feet).

* In a 2004 study from the University of Luebeck in Germany, 106 volunteers showed they could do three times better on a simple test than those who had piled up LESS than 8 hours of sleep.

* Think TV helps you get to sleep? Maybe. But it might make your sleep less restful. Studies show television disrupts sleep even if you shut it off hours before your head hits the pillow.

* Go easy on workaholic behavior. Working until 10 pm every night might feel righteous and good, but it’s not only hard on family life, you deny your body time to ‘untighten.” Studies show disrupted sleep for those who work until they drop, no matter how nobly they manage to do so.

* That said, a 15-minute review of key work details is enough to get that “wake with the solution” result so many crave. Be sure to keep that notepad on your nightstand.

* Have trouble sleeping? Try the counter-intuitive. Like exercise in the morning. And loads of sunlight. Plus a short afternoon nap (emphasis on short: 10-15 minutes at lunch time is nothing to feel guilty about).

* Eat a protein breakfast. Yes, zero carbs. No toast. No bagel. Definitely not doughnuts, fruit juice, or anything with sugar. It will buy you an extra few hours. It may even get you through the day. You’ll be even better off if you do the same for lunch. Or skip lunch entirely and take a walk instead. Whatever you do, do NOT eat big in the middle of the day.

* In a real pinch, drink coffee but drink it right. Which means sipping it slowly — cold if you have to — on the hour or half hour. The longer you make the cup last, studies show the longer you can last. Not a substitute for sleep, but a fail-safe when you can’t get any.

* Forget, by the way, trying to make up for a week of not sleeping enough by “sleeping in” on the weekends. North of nine hours or more, it turns out, can make you just as tired and even age you just as fast as too little sleep.

Try this.

For one week, go to bed at 11 pm at the latest. Even if you have “lots to do.” And wake up when you wake, if you can, which should be around 6 am or 7 am. If you need to get up earlier, move the bedtime to 10 pm.

Then come back and tell me how you feel… and how much more productive you are.