Welcome Midnight Intrusions

Harvard’s B.F. Skinner is one of the most influential psychologists of all time. As the founder of behavioral psychology, it’s hard to find a corner of modern life his insights haven’t touched. I was fascinated to discover an eccentric habit, recorded in a 1963 journal entry that perhaps sheds some light on how he became such an insightful researcher:

“I usually wake up for an hour or so during the night. I have a clipboard, paper pad and pencil (with a small flashlight attached to the board) for making notes at night. I am not an insomniac. I enjoy the nightly hour and make good use of it.”

I loved that — “I make good use of the nightly hour.” What a stark contrast to how I normally treat waking in the night.

I’ve noticed for myself that, especially before a keynote or other large event, I often have trouble sleeping. Inevitably, my mind is racing, usually trying to solve a tangential problem that, for whatever reason, has intruded upon my sleep to interrupt the precious pre-event rest hours. In fact, just earlier this week, before a talk I was giving in Chicago, this happened. Ordinarily, I fight it, lazily putting off the intrusion, and tossing and turning until I go back to sleep.

But instead of tossing and turning, I decided to “pull a Skinner” and treat it like a gift. I actually turned on a light, and wrote down my thoughts without too much filtering, or even processing. I started to go to sleep, when a few more thoughts came. Dutifully, I accepted the gift and wrote them down, too. In the morning light, I was delighted to discover that I had made a couple of significant advances on a problem that’s been puzzling me. (Unrelated to the looming keynote, unfortunately, but meaningful to me nonetheless.)

There’s a rich heritage of innovators who’ve leveraged their sleep to accomplish breakthroughs. And learning of Skinner’s regular habit, I couldn’t help but wonder how many inventive ideas must have been documented in his hypnogogic state, and how valuable they must have been found to be the following morning, for this to have become a regular ritual that he enforced the rest of his life.

As Mason Currey describes in his delightful Daily Rituals, “By the time Skinner retired from his Harvard teaching post in 1974, that nightly hour of sleeplessness had become an integral part of his routine. His timer now rang four times a day: at midnight, 1:00 AM, 5:00 AM, and 7:00 AM, for one hour of nocturnal composition in addition to his usual two hours at dawn. He followed this routine seven days a week, holidays included, until only a few days before his death in 1990.”

Skinner clearly derived immense value from the night watch, and I’ve seen firsthand how making good use of the time is possible. Instead of fighting them, try welcoming midnight intrusions.

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