Why we're more creative at night and how to reproduce the effect

Interesting article. Hits home for me. I&#x27;ve honestly struggled with this for years. I&#x27;ve always been a night owl.<p>As a young adult, I managed to get away with it; my family and friends would often called me &quot;lazy&quot; or a &quot;late sleeper&quot; but I always pointed out that, although I woke up at 11, I went to bed at 4, so it&#x27;s not like I&#x27;m sleep for 12 hours at a time.<p>However, as an adult, it&#x27;s challenging; I have to get up early for work or school, but I crave the late-night dives into my thoughts.<p>Also, it&#x27;s not that I necessarily like being alone—I wouldn&#x27;t call myself a solitary person—but I find that the night is also productive and fertile time because there are fewer distractions: once everyone&#x27;s asleep I can work undisturbed; for me there&#x27;s something calming about the night&#x2F;early morning.

I find even as a chef I have kept the same habits as when programming.<p>When I on my kitchen at 10am, I&#x27;m a pure zombie, give me my coffee, let me prep and get the hell out of my way. But 8-9pm when I&#x27;m cleaning up , yeah I start getting more creative then (infact I designed my new waygu nori Maki last night from that), and when I&#x27;m at home, I&#x27;ll still be thinking about recipes and jotting down notes to test and try during my zombie hours.<p>&quot;Exhaustion, it appears, can spur creativity because, frankly, you just don’t give a damn.&quot;<p>This i can agree with. At the moment I&#x27;m short a chef, so I&#x27;m pulling 12-14 hour shifts every day. By Sunday(day 6), pretty worn out, but I find myself more willing to try crazy combinations.

A lot of people use some kind of drugs to get creative, but as the article points out: you can train this by learning to set aside thoughts that block the creative process (simple thoughts like: &quot;this is probably not possible&quot;).<p>Alcohol might help some times but as with every drugs: it&#x27;s a loan. You have to repay it some time. Most of the time in the form of exhaustion.<p>Also: sometimes creativity without boundries is&#x27;t interesting anymore because it has become too chaotic. So maybe some boundries are always needed.

Should anyone else come accross this article at this point, be aware that the author is seriously confused about how the brain works. Quite possibly every single biological claim in the article is either seriously misleading or outright incorrect.<p>For easy to confirm evidence of this, attempt to find support in the one reference cited for the statement that it is cited as a reference for.

&gt; <i>Not too many, of course, because the more you drink the less other critical thinking functions have to keep going. The trick is to drink just the right amount of alcohol.</i><p>Ah, the mythical Ballmer Peak[1].<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;323&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;323&#x2F;</a>

Congratulations, you are a creative alcoholic, now what?