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Comment by gkhartman | Hacker News Reader

I've often thought this was the case. Tangentially, when I don't get enough sleep, and my executive function is impaired, I tend to drift into involuntary daydreams. The content of those daydreams trends to feel like simulations of future events and possible outcomes. I can't say it's related, but I often wondered if my brain is saying "If your not going to sleep enough, so be it, I'll try to squeeze in some simulation tasks during the day". When I was a teen, I'd daydream about skateboarding. It could feel so realistic that I could get a "jump scare" in imagined situations that ended in me hitting the ground.

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You might be microsleeping

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/work-hour-training-for-nurses/long....

“The human brain can respond to sleep deprivation by reducing alertness and generating microsleeps – involuntary episodes of sleep lasting a few seconds.

During microsleep, you may appear to be awake (eyes open), but your brain will not process information. Thus, lapses in attention occur.“

I seem to have microsleep trigger when my wife is telling me we've got something planned in three months' time.

In three months minus one day, she'll let me know (again) and, damn if it's not the first I'd heard of that, and damn if my reaction doesn't cause an argument.

it's really weird when they start conversations by saying "you weren't listening to me, were you?"

I wouldn't be surprised if you told that ADHD has been diagnosed.

If that's happening all the time as GP says, probably true.

I do like reminding people that a lot of strategies / techniques / process improvements which help people with ADHD, also really help non-ADHD people as well. In this case, even someone without ADHD can occasionally forget or not mentally "record" a specific event/calendar date. Both ADHD and non-ADHD people would benefit from a calendar maintained by both them and their partner, along with both partners reviewing the calendar together. And periodic verbal reminders leading up to the day rather than just the day the event is agreed to and the day before the scheduled event.

The goal of most ADHD time-management techniques is to offload what you can out of your executive functioning brain / working memory, so that you can use as much of your working memory as possible for other unplanned & dynamic things that pop up throughout the day. Even if you have an excellent working memory, you still benefit from offloading stuff that doesn't really need to be there.

We recently (-ish) started using a shared calendar.

Issues only crop up for things not put into it, or when they don't have a good breadcrumb trail of reminders leading up to it.

The main issue with my lack of remembering / hearing / listening / caring is that as soon as I walk in the door, before my bag is put down, before I've had time to change out of my work clothes and maybe take a breath, I'm faced with the onslaught of a detailed, step by step account of her day, interspersed with "by the way, we're going to X with Y on the Zth of September". There's no algorithm to separate the small amount of wheat from the abundance of chaff.

I'm a complete arse, but she only notices when I say "you didn't tell me about that!?".

I recognize myself in your description. So probably I need to diagnose myself? /s

I've long bad a hypothesis that dreams are kinda like a training simulator where you can test your reactions. This is then esp. useful for extreme situations (simulated as nightmares) - like you can't really learn in the real world how to react when you encounter a grizzly bear for example - you can't mess it up the first time or you're dead. But if you live in Alaska, you're likely to have such a dream and have the opportunity to try out such a scenario.

Anecdotally: I live in bear country but never dreamt about bear encounters. I dreamt a lot about wolves as a kid but only twice after i moved to a place where wolves are, and in such unrealistic way that I'm fairly sure it would be moot as practice/hypothesis testing. Most of my learnings in dealing with wildlife come from things like bear aware training and real life encounters.

It's hard to state 'I've never dreamt about X', its more appropriate to state 'I've never remembered a dream about X'.

Fair enough. I remember my dreams most days, often multiple per night, but you're right that I can't be sure I remember all of them.

You’ve succinctly described what happens to me when I don’t sleep too well, even down the sudden jump scare when something happens in the day dream

Have you tried a sleep study? My life has been spiraling down the tubes until recently. Sleep apnea will wreck your life.

Not yet, but that's not a bad idea.

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