Overworking Your Brain Can Spark Ideas

I can relate to this a little bit:

A few years ago I was assigned to a small team to solve a hard problem. It took us months and months of 80-100hr weeks. We would leave long enough to shower and "sleep" before returning.

When I would get mentally exhausted, I would get cranky. I would take this crankiness out on whatever task I was currently preforming. This would lead me to go off on a verbal tangent. I would end up drawing the most absurd comparisons, painting an insane hilarious picture of what we were in the middle of doing, and by the end the entire room was usually in tears from laughing so hard.

Now, I'm sure one of the reasons it seemed funny is because we were tired, granted. But, I know a normal, rested me could not do the same things. I can actually look back on it now and wonder "how the hell did I come up with that nonsense?"