I am a dreamer. Well, not in the traditional sense.
What I mean is that I spend much of my sleep dreaming. I don’t say that with any sense of pride—it’s simply a fact. My nights are often filled with long, vivid dreams.
So when this topic came up last week at an IIT Bombay Alumni Association get-together, I immediately found myself joining the conversation.
Someone mentioned that they wake up remembering several dreams from the night before. Quite a few others nodded in agreement. Then the discussion took an interesting turn.
Several people observed that if they spent some time thinking about a difficult problem before going to bed, they often woke up with fresh ideas or a completely new perspective. It was almost as if the mind had quietly continued working while they slept.
That reminded me of a passage from one of my favourite books, The Intellectual Life, by A. G. Sertillanges. He writes:
“Very often, gleams of light come in a few minutes’ sleeplessness, in a second perhaps; … you must fix them. To entrust them to the relaxed brain is like writing on water.”
I have always loved that observation.
Sertillanges reminds us that insights often arrive when the mind is no longer working at full conscious effort—those quiet moments before sleep or during a brief awakening at night.
Then comes his memorable warning: “To entrust them to the relaxed brain is like writing on water.” The image is perfect. A brilliant thought may appear effortlessly, but unless we capture it immediately, it leaves no more trace than words written on the surface of a pond. His practical advice is simple: keep a notebook beside the bed. Today, our phone can play the same role.
Unfortunately, my dreams haven’t solved any of my problems. They have mostly produced wonderfully illogical stories. Most of my real “aha!” moments have arrived elsewhere—while swimming laps in a pool or standing under a shower.
Why do these insights appear when the mind is relaxed in the first place? Why is it that the solution often arrives only after we’ve stopped consciously working on the problem?
And I think the reason is surprisingly simple.
Sometimes, we are just too close to the problem.
Most of us have experienced this. You’ve been wrestling with a difficult problem for hours. You reread the same document, redraw the same diagram, or stare at the same spreadsheet, convinced that if you think just a little harder, the solution will emerge. It doesn’t.
Then you go for a walk. Or take a shower. Or swim a few laps. Or simply sleep on it. And suddenly, the answer appears. This isn’t magic. It’s perspective.
There is an old saying that we “can’t see the forest for the trees.” When we stay immersed in a problem for too long, our thinking becomes confined to the boundaries of that problem. We keep examining the same facts, making the same assumptions, and following the same mental paths.
Stepping away changes that.
Distance allows us to zoom out. Instead of seeing one tree in exquisite detail, we begin to see how the entire forest fits together. Connections that were invisible suddenly become obvious. Assumptions that we never questioned become easier to challenge. Ideas that seemed unrelated begin to combine into a solution.
Ironically, some of our best thinking happens when we stop trying so hard to think.
My Swimming Office
Swimming has been my favourite thinking environment for many years. Today, my routine consists of swimming uninterrupted freestyle laps for about forty-five minutes. There are no phones. No emails. No conversations. Just the rhythmic movement of the body and the quiet repetition of lap after lap.
For many people, that might sound monotonous. For me, it has become a thinking laboratory.
I often carry an unresolved problem into the pool—not with the intention of forcing a solution, but simply allowing it to accompany me. Somewhere between the laps, while my attention is no longer locked onto the problem itself, new ideas begin to emerge.
Article outlines. Solutions to work-related challenges. Coaching frameworks. Decisions that had seemed difficult only an hour earlier.
Rarely do they appear because I analysed the problem harder. More often, they appear because my mind was finally free to look at it differently.
Baths Have Their Own Magic
Swimming isn’t the only place where this happens. Many of my smaller “eureka” moments have arrived while taking a shower.
Years ago, while pursuing my MBA, I was desperately looking for an organisation willing to share data for an academic data science project. I spent days thinking about whom to approach.
Then, during a bath, the answer appeared almost effortlessly.
My brother owned a radiology diagnostic centre. The machines there had quietly accumulated years of digital data that could be analysed.
The solution had always existed. I simply hadn’t seen it while I was looking too closely at the problem.
Capture the Idea Before It Disappears
Whether the insight comes in bed, in the shower, in the swimming pool or during a walk, one lesson remains the same.
Capture it immediately. Ideas are surprisingly fragile. They often arrive with such clarity that we become convinced we could never forget them. Yet we do.
That is why Sertillanges advised keeping a notebook beside the bed. Today, a simple notes app is enough. You don’t need to write an essay. A sentence, a sketch, or even a few keywords are often sufficient to preserve the essence of the idea.
An idea that isn’t captured is no different from an idea that never occurred.
Stepping Away Is Part of Thinking
We often believe that solving difficult problems requires spending more time in front of them. Sometimes it does. But sometimes the most productive thing we can do is deliberately step away. Carry the problem with you, but don’t keep staring at it. The distance doesn’t take you away from the answer. Very often, it is what finally allows you to see it.
Subscribe to my newsletter, to get tips like this and more, directly in your inbox!
