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I seem to have high dreaming sleep when I’ve spent long hours doing some sort of detailed, focused mental flow work (cf: a day doing CAD yesterday). It’s not physically exhausting like a day hiking, which seems to lead to dead, dreamless sleep. Anyone else notice this?
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Half-assed theory: high dreaming = active integration into memory of recent learning. If you’re not dreaming you’re not learning. And only hands-on high-tempo trial-and-error learning has this effect, not reading or very slow iteration loops that span days.
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I too remember little of my dreams, but on intense dreaming nights I wake up slightly exhausted, like I’ve been doing a mental workout while asleep. I suspect some sleeping memory integration work is not really part of the “recovery” aspect of sleep, but in a tradeoff with it.
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Replying to @vgr
I'm pretty sure rem:nrem sleep ratio is known to be effected by activity type, and related to the recovery needs of mental vs physical activity. Personally, I rarely remember dreaming either way.
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Interestingly even intense consulting work doesn’t do this for me. Like if I sit in on a meeting for 6-8h. That’s because I’m mostly taking notes I then process and discuss with clients over days or weeks. No loop is iterating multiple times a day, let alone hours or minutes.
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Back when I was a manager, I’d have days where I’d be in meetings all day, and talking a lot (like pitching or talking) and that didn’t do it either. You don’t iterate-learn on things like pitches at high frequency. It’s mostly open-loop agenda pushing.
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Second mention of Tetris, and poker also in comments. I’ve had that too, where I’m even literally dreaming Tetris games (used to play a lot). But in last night’s case I wasn’t dreaming CAD manipulations. It was more like general logistical reasoning/planning.
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Replying to @vgr
Sort of similar. For hiking I get visuals of maps and terrain as I drift off, then nothing much For repetitive detail work I get 'tetris effect' style processing dreams
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I had some sort of complicated dream about coordinating a trip with multiple people with all flights randomly canceled and I had a car and I forgot to pick up someone waiting for me and derailed into opportunistically having dinner with someone else. Both important people.
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Strangely, I can’t recall this effect around social learning, as in long hours of interactive, intersubjective work maneuvering around other people. It *should* drive learning about how people work. This could be because I’m rarely in truly adversarial conversations.
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I suspect people who spend 6-8 hours a day in adversarial interactions (sales, sports, martial arts… including mental ones like chess) will have a similar kind of intense dreaming, but more so because there’s social stress involved and people are messier than non-living things.
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These “generalization dreams” have no real narrative structures for me btw. There’s no story, just activity. With a sense of importance/urgency, but routine.
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Hmm I’m starting to see the outlines of a dream-based feedback regulation model of how to work. 2x2: x-axis: < 1 day vs >1 day learning loop length (effectively, closed loop/circadian vs non-circadian leaning) y-axis: low to high conflict.
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Circadian + low-conflict = generalization dreams (“tactical” dreams) Circadian + high conflict = fever dreams Non-circadian + low-conflict = no dreams/poor sleep/anomie Non-circadian + high-conflict = narrative dreams (“strategy” dreams)
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Physically exhausting but non-learning (at cerebellum+ level) days don’t trigger dreaming effects, since learning is likely at brain-stem and lower levels. Like after a long hike your body might learn better glucose regulation, but that’s unconscious so no dreaming component.
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Oh neat… I should look at my whoop data to see if this got picked up.
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Replying to @vgr
Sure. This isn't a primary source (I can link some later), but @ouraring has compiled some great sleep resources that expand on this: ouraring.com/blog/sleep-sta
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Yes! It shows up 😃 Won’t share data but diff between the physically vs mentally exhausted nights shows up clearly! I’m going to whoop the shit out of this. Dream journaling here I come!
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Secondary hypothesis: strong feelers who do a lot of emotional labor around people all day will have a parallel dreaming matrix. Not just nurses and waiters, but also actors doing dozens of takes of scenes all day, musicians of more emo genres… (ballads, not Bach)
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I’m pretty even-keeled emotionally, with both low range and low intensity, and weak regulation when I do get emotional. Atrophied feeling side. I spend 95% of my mental time thinking, not feeling. I imagine 95% feelers have a parallel 2x2. I can guess at structure.
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