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Sleep is for the weak – at least, that’s the mantra I chant to myself every time I pull an all-nighter because my story ideas refuse to write themselves during normal daylight hours. My mom is an artist, and when I was a kid, I remember there would be times during the summer or autumn months when I’d barely see her because she’d be heading out to the garage at 11 pm – giant pot of coffee in hand – to paint until 6 in the morning when she’d come in, get me ready for school, then sleep the rest of the day before repeating the cycle. This usually lasted just a week or two, and then she’d go back to being a “normal” mom.

When I grew up to be a writer, I found that creativity loves to come late at night when the rest of the world is asleep. But finding a balance between creativity and sleep can be tricky.

Photo: Pexels/George Milton

So, if you’re a creative person, you’ve probably had your fair share of sleep cycle struggles. However, there is a new study that has found that your creativity can be enhanced using a rather unique napping habit practiced by both Thomas Edison and Salvador Dalí!

The specific paper was a study conducted by researchers at the Paris Brain Institute, and they published their findings in a paper that was featured in journal Science Advances. In the study, 103 participants were asked to fall asleep and hit the N1, also known as the hypnagogia stage of sleep.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

During N1 sleep, people are able to dream a little bit and perceive shapes and colors, but they’re not yet in a full deep sleep. Some can even still perceive noise while in N1.

However, the trick of the study is to stay in N1 just briefly. Both Dalí and Edison would take naps while holding objects in their hands, such as a spoon for example. They did this because when they started to really nod off, their muscles would relax and they’d drop their object to the ground where it would make noise and wake them up.

Photo: Raw Pixel

Then, they’d go back to their work, believing that the brief nap helped them with their creativity. And that is what the study mimicked. The participants were each given a cup to hold while they napped. They were hooked up to an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to monitor their sleep. Once they dropped their cups and woke themselves up, they were given tests.

Given that measuring creativity is a little difficult as it’s oftentimes subjective, the researchers came up with a creative solution. The subjects were given a math problem to solve when they woke up, only this particular problem required some “creative thinking” to solve because an easy solution was “hidden” within the equation.

Photo: StockVault

The study found that 30% of participants who remained awake were able to spot the hidden solution. Of the participants who managed to fall into an N1 sleep for at least 15 seconds, 83% got the hidden solution. However, for those subjects who went further than the N1 stage of sleep, their creativity seemed to get squashed altogether.

No one can really say for certain why the N1 stage of sleep seems to really spark the brain into a sense of creative associations, but it is safe to say that there is evidence to show that being in a semi-lucid state is beneficial to one’s creative response. So, perhaps this is the perfect work-sleep balance that we creative people have been looking for. I mean, if it worked for the great Dalí, it’s bound to work for the rest of us, right? What do you think? Let us know!