I read an interesting research piece on the purpose of sleep recently. Where we typically see sleep as the necessary time to quiet the body, to rest and heal (muscle, immunity, etc) the brain’s purpose may be different. Sleep may just be used to help us forget and there for improve learning.
Sleep, according to this research, reveals a very active brain, physically changing. Connections in the brain reduce in number as the brain gets unclouded from all that has been internalized in waking hours. “When we sleep, the scientists argued, our brains pare back the connections to lift the signal over the noise.” So it appears that much less critical information is jettisoned or combined. The neural pathways condense, leaving the impactful memories and insights more clear.
If sleep can do this around all we learn during the day, then reflection opportunities could do similar for us between the work we do. Reflection can be seen as conscious unconsciousness; an opportunity to set aside the act of doing and rest. Be it alone or with peers, reflection is our professional daydream time; the stillness needed to put the pieces together, to expel the nonsense and make sense of what and why we do what we do – its part of the learning equation. We likely do this already in small doses but I’ve yet to see any organization encouraging this as part of the work process. However I find it ironic in that our workplaces, the organization, are routinely compared to a living organisms, and as such, all living things requires sleep in the cycle of life to function properly, to learn. So too then one could argue that an organization should encourage reflection as part of the cycle of work. It just can’t function properly without it.
