Sleep on it

We know that having time to sleep on something often gives us perspective, but this article in the New York Times goes a long way to pull together some of the research on why that is. It offers a lot of specific insight into the idea that a good deal of information sorting takes place during sleep.

studies “suggest that the sleeping brain works on learned information the way a change sorter does on coins. It seems first to distill the day’s memories before separating them — vocabulary, historical facts and dimes here; cello scales, jump shots and quarters over there. It then bundles them into readable chunks, at different times of the night. In effect, the stages of sleep seem to be specialized to handle specific types of information”

This is, of course, built into the DesignShop process, but for me, it was very interesting to get some further background and elucidation of the theory. Thinking of the sheer volume of information that people are confronted with in our workshops, this helps me to understand how the sleep between each day can impact the overall output of the session. It’s easy to overlook its importance.