Waking up early in the wee hours is usually not a good thing, as it could cause fatigue and all other problems.
However, one good side effect for waking up early in that it allows us to tap into our dreams. It is known that brains do not stop activities during our sleeps, but we usually do not remember what have happened.
I have found that sleep interruptions, especially these happen in the early mornings, help me recall my dreams. I do not know about other people, but my brain tends to produce a lot of strange and interesting stuff (e.g. color movies) during my sleep. And judging by the frequency I came up with ideas after waking up, I know in addition to playing weird my brain also did some serious work.
The most interesting thing I have observed is that most my dream thoughts are less rational than my day thoughts, and many ideas that appear to be plausible during my dreams become apparently ridiculous after I wake up. But sometimes I got really useful ideas. For example, some of my SIGGRAPH paper ideas, as well as the previous two posts (I woke up at 3 am this morning), are produced during my sleep.
Maybe I should intentionally disrupt my sleep when I am short on research ideas.
Leave a Reply