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Comment by riiii | Hacker News Reader

I heard a sleep expert say that during the night your logic and reasoning abilities are greatly reduced. I think it was in relation to dreaming, you don't want to apply much logic to that stuff.

That's why trying to solve problems in the middle of the night just ends up in stress.

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Pilots call the wee hours of the morning the "window of circadian low." Unless you routinely sleep during normal daytime hours (for a few weeks at least), the circadian low still nudges your brain and body metabolism toward a lower-energy state EVEN if you are fully rested up until that point.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

It also makes sense why I'll wake up in the middle of the night terrified of things that don't bother me during the day. My fears all are much more immediate in the witching hour, and I can't talk them away.

I'm the same. The only thing that has a chance of working is to remind myself that it's the middle of the night and however terrifying this is I'll deal with it in the morning.

Funny enough, I almost exclusively do my best problem solving at night. I'll wake up with solutions, or I'll stay awake and get things done. I'd say 90% of my Master's work was done between midnight and 3am.

But indeed, regardless of time of day, if I just wake up, or am woken up, I'm basically a big, dangerous toddler when it comes to problem solving.

Context and nuance is important, of course. We're all so different.

That often happened for me in grad school as well. Generally the questions I had trouble with on a take home exam would yield to late night inspiration. And if they didn't yield by a semi-reasonable time, I would go to bed and many times, as I was drifting off, an insight would come to me. One memorable time though, that didn't happen and I woke up several times in the middle of the night from stress dreams where I was trying to solve the problem. And when I thought about the dream, nothing I had been doing in it made any logical sense to actually help me with a solution. Fortunately I woke up early and was able to figure it out in the morning. It was not a very restful night of sleep though.

On the other hand, sometimes I find the time right after waking up the clearest, having an empty mental stack. Like having a clear cache.

correct, once i notice myself making stupid mistakes i verbally confirm it with myself and say whelp that's the night. superpower. too many times i've woken up and said what the fuck was i thinking?

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