Learn While You Sleep
Why There's Magic in Doing Something Daily
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During media interviews, prolific author Stephen King would often profess that he “writes every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday.” But in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he admitted that was a lie.
When he was writing, he actually wrote every single day including Christmas, the Fourth, and his birthday. He just didn’t want to sound like a “workaholic dweeb” to interviewers.
Of course, Stephen King is one of those inspirational elite figures that we regular people may have a hard time identifying with. Can normal humans continuously do hard things every day? Should they?
Why Every Day?
Writers are told to write every day. Athletes are coached to practice every day. Language learners are taught to speak their target language every day. What is it about doing something every day that improves learning and performance? Might the old night-before-cram-session actually perform better? What about spreading out the learning, practicing, or creating with longer intervals like every few days or once a week?
Academic researchers have studied just this question and found that learning at spaced intervals can improve the ability to build and retain memories. That is, being pounded repeatedly with the same material without time to process that information yields worse learning performance than when allowing for time between learning sessions. Importantly, the learning interval (the time between learning sessions) as compared to learning performance follows an inverted U-shaped curve with a notable step up at 24 hours.
If the break between learning sessions is too short, there’s not enough time to process the memory. If the interval is too long, the memory is more likely to be forgotten. Starting at around the 24-hour interval, the recall performance gets much better. The significance of 24 hours may be driven by what happens during sleep.
Learn While You’re Sleeping
In Matthew Walker’s 2017 best seller Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams, he recounts the story of a pianist who was struggling with a difficult piece of music that he couldn’t fluently play, even though he tried countless times in a row. The pianist went to bed in frustration, but when he woke up the next morning, he played the piece flawlessly.
This story started Walker on a journey to understand how closely related sleep is to learning. Walker’s subsequent research uncovered that during sleep, memories are reactivated and re-consolidated even without physically practicing anything. It seems that slow wave sleep, also known as “deep sleep,” is particularly important to the formation of these consolidated memories.
So the 24 hour interval is important because you can improve your skill level by simply getting a good night’s sleep. Practicing more frequently during the day doesn’t afford this special nighttime processing and practicing less frequently can lead to those memories deteriorating before they can be re-enforced by the next day’s practice. Hence, doing something daily not only builds on the skill from one day to the next, but it also helps solidify yesterday’s learnings without you doing anything!
OK, But Gimme a Break
How long can people not named Stephen King keep creating, practicing, and improving every single day? As someone who attempted to follow the “write every day” advice on my forthcoming book Outsmart the Learning Curve, I blocked out two, two-hour sessions each day, including weekends, to write. I updated my calendar entries to repeat “forever.” For me, waking up and writing for two hours first thing in the morning caught my brain in its most alert state. Then I worked on other projects, exercised, had lunch, and took a 20 - 30 minute power nap mid-afternoon.
I found that nap refreshed my brain enough so I could intensely focus on writing again for another couple hours. Even with this relatively easy schedule (as compared to my startup days), I couldn’t keep it up every single day for more than three weeks without my writing productivity falling off.
I discovered the value of rest days when I was forced to take time off because of travel, sickness, or other life events that got in the way. At first, I was disappointed in myself for not being able to follow the advice to write every day. Then I found that, while it often took a day or two to ramp up after one of these breaks, the short recess rejuvenated me, and I was able to get back into my daily three to four hour writing routine for another few weeks.
Friends and family members said, “duh of course you need a rest or you’ll burn out.” Then I found gobs of research that supported it, so I believed them.
What’s the takeaway? The power of daily practice, coupled with the memory-enhancing benefits of sleep, can elevate your learning and performance. Unless you’re superhuman like Stephen King, incorporating break days is not only necessary, but will recharge you to go on another dedicated productivity streak. If you can strike the right balance between daily effort and restorative breaks, you'll be amazed at the transformative results you can achieve.
What’s your optimum schedule during times of intense learning, creativity, or productivity?
I've come to learn that my brain is at its best first thing in the morning - things that seemed unsolvable turn out to be easy then.