More Creative at Night?
December 31st, 2005
I’ve been told I’m kind of like a little kid when it comes to winding down at the end of the day. If I’m really beat, I tend to get hyper right before I finally collapse and fall asleep, I’ll get the giggles talking excitedly about something completely incoherent. I also find that I tend to be more creative at night, especially after 10pm and I wonder if there is a correlation. The frenzy of energy that I sputter out just at the end of the day might be the same that I funnel into my creative work on late nights.
Are you more creative at night? If so, what would you attribute this to? (On a related note, the Fixpert brand and look/feel of this web site were created all in one late night burst of creativity.)
December 31st, 2005 at 2:39 pm
Hell yeah I am. I’m a crap designer, and the only half-decent designs that I’ve ever mustered have been after midnight. Though I write more code during the day, my most elegant solutions and best breakthroughs have come late at night.
December 31st, 2005 at 9:56 pm
I know exactly what you mean about late-night creativity, and frankly, that’s where most of my best work comes from. If I get inspired at 1:00 AM, I’ll likely be up until 3:00 or even 4:00. It’s partly a sort of manic drive, and perhaps I’m less inhibited, so I don’t censor my ideas so harshly. Other than that, I’m unclear as to why late night should be such a creative time. I think of sleep as a process that cleans out the junk-drawer of your mind, kind of like rebooting a computer to get rid of built-up invalid program states.
I do know that if I go to sleep while thinking about a tough problem, then I will often wake up with my first thought being a pointer to the solution, or even the solution itself.
@Waldo: Heh, I wouldn’t say elegant in my case. I write inspired but very rough code late at night, which I can then quickly polish into elegant code.
January 1st, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I don’t know about creative but I tend to be able to solve problems (programming, engineering, physical projects) when I am least thinking about them. Usually, I am doing something completely different and the answer will pop into my head.
January 1st, 2006 at 10:32 pm
This is so interesting, so it sounds like others also experience the late night inspirations. I’ll have to do a little looking into this (if there’s been any research done on it, etc) and see what I come up with. I’ll post any findings here. Thanks guys!
January 2nd, 2006 at 2:19 am
I’m one of those that is most productive at night, and I’ve always attributed it to the fact that there are far fewer distractions, voluntary or otherwise.