[kradeelav]

My schedule's similar to yours - designer echoing a need for a minimum of 9 hours, preferably 10, especially for any serious creative work. (Personally I also wonder if there's a link there, about needing increased hours for flexible creative thinking?)

(Work wise, I currently balance 2 very demanding start-up-y jobs, and learned the hard way that even 8 hours doesn't cut the sheer amount of energy that's needed to handle fires that come from both of those places. Cutting out every inch of social or leisure life before sleep ironically gives me my best weeks ... and I know as an introvert that's probably easier for me than some, but good lord. Sleep's one of those things I don't compromise on anymore.)

[1996]

I need increased hours for thinking, but for some reasons my creativity peaks on the rare days I am sleep deprived!! It is weird, as I do not compromise on sleep either!

I wonder if others feel their creativity improved on sleep deprived days? I have never read anything about that.

[doodhwala]

Perhaps you might not be looking at other factors.

Why were you sleep deprived? Were you involved in other tasks that kept your mood up thus fostering creativity? Was it actually that the task at hand was so enjoyable that you had already been putting extra time to get it done? Did you have deadlines?

I've noticed that you're creative when you end up putting more time and thought to any activity. You can fool yourself thinking that you are not getting ideas after sitting down for just 5 minutes to do a task. But if you are deliberate in your efforts (possibly due to the kind of work or imminent deadlines), then ideas will come to your mind.

[notahacker]

I find my creativity improved when my mind is tired, but once my focus returns and my dopamine levels are lower the following day, I tend to conclude that what my mind wanted me to create wasn't actually all that good...

[antibes]

I got the similar result, the thing thing my brain fancied earlier doesn't seem so great after the dopamine falls away.

But, I found that if I persisted with trying to create or refine the earlier idea, very often there was something good to be found, not always directly related. I might just be seeing a different part of the application code from a new perspective by trying to write a new feature using the same libraries, and go in and get a gain where they're used elsewhere.

[benbreen]

I often feel more creative when hungover, for some reason. Since (for me, at least) hangovers mostly consist of feeling worn out from sleeping badly, I wonder if there might be a connection there.

I seem to remember Olivia Laing touching on the hangover--> creativity phenomenon a bit in her book The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking. I suspect most of the people she writes about in that book (e.g. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas, Tennessee Williams) were chronically sleep deprived in addition to having drinking problems.

[antibes]

my company name is the result of a hangover, not a discernable moment between inspiration and telling my associate who sadly didn't come along because he was emigrating to Malaysia.

But I found hangovers equally assistive to quiet linear, procedural tasks, specifically reeling in telephone sales closes. I would say there's a combination of narrowed creativity, to talk around any already understood but surmountable objections, and the step by step almost rote procedure of confirming the customer's interests and the concessions where you have applied any, terms, and the okay, this is what I need you to do to deliver you x today.

Admittedly sometimes I found a excess of creativity arising from gallows humour, particularly if my customer happened to be likewise hungover - I would tease my favourite customers that they were getting my call in the morning, regardless of whether they signed by the end of a junket we held the night or weekend before. Colleagues kept immense Outlook calendars of sporting fixtures and rolled a feed individually for the latest on their customer's team affiliations.

I'm curious how many people on HN have been in corporate sales ever. Personally, I really enjoyed the experience. But I wasn't stuck with it, I was seconded to make sure that technical arguments actually were supported by the operations and development guys. I reckon if sales functions could level with the experience of the dev/ops teans, prior to calling, close ratios would be up all around. That's what my job was, basically.

[cimmanom]

Creativity can require you to turn off your logical "filters", and sleep deprivation can make those "filters" less effective (it tends to have the same effect on social "filters", unfortunately).

[antibes]

I can't understand such long sleeping, because​I found the very fact of being interested in learning something new or solving a problem, keeps me alert and awake, literally a adrenaline rush.

[andai]

Intentional sleep deprivation is being investigated as a cure for depression, and is a known tripper for mania and hypomania (which are associated with increased creativity).

[azeirah]

Sleep deprivation is linked to an increase in dopamine. I know this because I researched why I was able to concentrate better on nights with poor sleep compared to nights with great sleep.

Oddly enough, for people with ADHD, a poor sleeping schedule might actually help (in the short term) with concentration issues!

[jeffwass]

This!

I found in university, strangely through sheer accident, (during the first two years of my PhD program in physics) that I performed best on my final exams and written qualifiers with three hours of sleep.

I would sleep 3 hours after late-night study, drink a lot of coffee, and then be able to hyper-focus like a felon on a three-hour-long exam.

[andai]

How was the recovery?

[jeffwass]

Not ideal, but in some cases manageable for several days.

Eg, I remember doing 3 qualifiers on Mon, Wed, and Fri in one week, so a small nap and then back to studying for the next one.

Not a fun week, that.

[kennxfl]

This phenomenon is usually followed by a deep slump in productivity after that dopamine rush wears off.

[azeirah]

Oh absolutely, a day of poor sleep takes two days to recover from in my personal experience ;(

[dsego]

I think sleep deprivation is related to hypomanic episodes.