Dream a Little Dream For Me

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I have insomnia. I have had it consistently for approximately 3 years, but it has been a part of my life for more than 20 years. I used to hate it, while feeling sorry for myself. The older I get, the more prevalent it seems. I no longer hate it. I embrace it, and let me tell you why this is a benefit to my leadership and business life.

Several studies have shown that creativity is much more prevalent in dreams than in actual life. Why, you ask? It is because the portion of the brain that manages logic and reason is largely restrained during the first 3 hours of sleep. This restraint of logic permits the free association connectivity of memories and ideas in a way that can produce novel combinations. The key to this being a benefit for your personal, leadership, or business life is the point at which you wake up in your sleep progression. I now automatically wake up after 3 hours, which allows me to vividly remember the novel combinations that were in my dreams. Typically, after the first 3 hours of sleep, it is harder for one to remember the vivid details of dreams if one sleeps a full 6 - 8 hours consecutively.

I have learned to quickly write down the concepts in my dreams that align perfectly with my personal or business plans that I could not figure out during my conscious hours. It is amazing to me when I look at a business plan that looks like a logical and quantitative disciplined document, when I know that many of the concepts were conjured up while I was unconscious.

Another recent benefit to insomnia is that I exercise consistently in efforts to add oxygen to my brain and not grow weary during my work days. As I tell my wife regularly, I am extremely sexy. As most wives do, she just smirks and walks away. Strangely enough, this dedication to fitness can be attributed to the increased insomnia that I experience.

As leaders, we spend several of our conscious hours trying to solve problems, maneuver competitively, plan for the future, strategize, and generally piece together a puzzle of a thousand parts in efforts to grow our business and team members. When in reality, all we may need is a little nap. When Colin Powell was Secretary of State of the US, he had a couch installed in his office for the purpose of taking naps. I thought this was the strangest thing when I first read about this. He would take daily naps, and his team was well informed of what he was doing. From what he personally stated, these nap times were on his calendar. I get it now, and I fully apologize to General Powell for my initial thoughts.

On a personal note, I am huge fan of Prince. Prince wrote many of his hit songs while he was asleep. He kept a notepad next to his bed because of the frequency of his creative bursts after awakening. As leaders, we must learn to embrace the many changes in the journey of our physiological adaptations to life. For me, insomnia no longer sucks. What sucks is if I allow the gift of remembering the creative details in my dreams to sit dormant, when I could be benefitting my personal and leadership life, which in turns benefits the teams and people that follow me.

Sleep well

And if the sleep is brief

May you remember the dream details

That inspire your peace

(Mac McNeil, 2025)

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