It is widely known that a complete sleep cycle takes around 90 minutes, and with that in mind, we can better plan our sleep schedules to allow for better, more fuller sleep. This means 6 hours or 7 and a half hours of sleep is better than 7 hours or 8. With that in mind, we also know that we need an uninterrupted sleep cycle to be productive – any less or more and that will leave us a little groggy and lethargic.
However, if you have reached a creative block where you aren’t able to generate any new ideas, there might be some way to manipulate your sleep cycle to seemingly force creativity. Where you would normally need to sleep in 90-minute intervals to induce productivity, try waking up at the 60-minute mark of a sleep cycle.
30 minutes just before the sleep cycle ends, your brain is producing delta waves, while also processing the information that you have taken in during the day. Waking up at this stage of sleep will leave you slightly lethargic and unproductive, but the good thing is that at this time, your inhibitions are also lowered, allowing you to brainstorm ideas as if without an internal filter.
You might be able to notice that when trying to brainstorm ideas normally, you might hear an internal voice shouting “that’s not the way to do it!”, “that shouldn’t be like that!”, or “that’s just wrong!” This is the voice that shoots down our ideas as well at times. When we wake up at the 60-minute mark of a 90-minute sleep cycle, this little voice is not turned on yet, allowing us to create great ideas seemingly with out a filter.
The thing to learn here is that we should not always limit ourselves to the 90-minute sleep rule. There are quite a lot of ways to manipulate your sleep cycles to allow yourself different outcomes. Whereas 90 minutes may aid in increased productivity, 60 minutes will allow you to be creative – and 20 minutes will give you an energy boost.
