[MKSixer]

I had a very interesting experience which I thought I'd share here.

I've been working on a complicated algorithm for the last 2 or 3 weeks and the final resolution of the problem set has eluded me for the last few days. I have been close but upon checking work, it was always slightly off. It has really hacked me off.

Now here is the rub and please bear with me: My current gf is several years (16) younger than me and had never seen The Wire. This is something that was intolerable and I had to correct immediately. For the last 10 days we've been binging it and finally finished on Sunday. She loved it.

Last night I dreamt that I was sitting with Lester Freamon from The Wire in the crappy office they used and he was walking me through the problem set. Once he finished the explanation I awakened and went to my office and made the changes, "Lester", explained in the dream and "BAM"...problem solved. I sat there stunned for a moment the got up and made my coffee.

My general problem solving methodology is to study a problem and all of the information I can put my hands on with regard to it's solution then think intensely and model as much as I can. I can't ever remember a solution coming to me through a dream in this manner.

Does anyone else have this experience? If so, please share.

Cheers-mk

[King Rudi]

I've been a prophetic dreamer since I was a wee lad. There have beena great many number of times that answers have come to me in a dream. The most memorable was asking a girlfriend who Tommy was straight out of waking up. Needless to say, Tommy had been keeping her warm for me. Had no clue who Tommy was, but she had no choice to but confess. The look on her face when I asked. This was a time before cell phones as well.

Leads for jobs, solutions for problems at work, etc. This happens to me fairly often.

[Tommy-G]

The only thing I saw was your GF is 16 yrs younger than you......you freakin stud you!

[Hawkeye]

Originally Posted by TommyG-inFlaNow

The only thing I saw was your GF is 16 yrs younger than you......you freakin stud you!

I wasn't sure if he was saying she was 16 years younger, or that she was 16!

I hope I don't get answers through dreams cause I never can remember them after waking up.... wouldn't that be a tease.

[Tommy-G]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye

I wasn't sure if he was saying she was 16 years younger, or that she was 16!

I hope I don't get answers through dreams cause I never can remember them after waking up.... wouldn't that be a tease.

Me too, but my interpretation was funnier in my mind

[detroitm2]

I'm a software engineer. Some of my best ideas come while I'm sleeping.

[pennsiveguy]

Originally Posted by MKSixer

I had a very interesting experience which I thought I'd share here.

I've been working on a complicated algorithm for the last 2 or 3 weeks and the final resolution of the problem set has eluded me for the last few days. I have been close but upon checking work, it was always slightly off. It has really hacked me off.

Now here is the rub and please bear with me: My current gf is several years (16) younger than me and had never seen The Wire. This is something that was intolerable and I had to correct immediately. For the last 10 days we've been binging it and finally finished on Sunday. She loved it.

Last night I dreamt that I was sitting with Lester Freamon from The Wire in the crappy office they used and he was walking me through the problem set. Once he finished the explanation I awakened and went to my office and made the changes, "Lester", explained in the dream and "BAM"...problem solved. I sat there stunned for a moment the got up and made my coffee.

My general problem solving methodology is to study a problem and all of the information I can put my hands on with regard to it's solution then think intensely and model as much as I can. I can't ever remember a solution coming to me through a dream in this manner.

Does anyone else have this experience? If so, please share.

Cheers-mk

Wow, amazing story. Unfortunately I can't ever recall dreaming about a current job or work task. That could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. The only work-related dreams I have are ones where I'm on a job that I had 30 years ago and things aren't going well - I'm running behind schedule, I forgot part of the load, or I forgot a stop on my route.

[MKSixer]

Originally Posted by King Rudi

I've been a prophetic dreamer since I was a wee lad. There have beena great many number of times that answers have come to me in a dream. The most memorable was asking a girlfriend who Tommy was straight out of waking up. Needless to say, Tommy had been keeping her warm for me. Had no clue who Tommy was, but she had no choice to but confess. The look on her face when I asked. This was a time before cell phones as well.

Leads for jobs, solutions for problems at work, etc. This happens to me fairly often.

My dad has the same experiences. I lost my HS class ring shortly after I received it. My dad woke up one morning, walked out to the back yard, picked it up and brought it to my room. I hadn't told him that I lost the ring.

Originally Posted by TommyG-inFlaNow

The only thing I saw was your GF is 16 yrs younger than you......you freakin stud you!

Lol. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Hawkeye

I wasn't sure if he was saying she was 16 years younger, or that she was 16!

I hope I don't get answers through dreams cause I never can remember them after waking up.... wouldn't that be a tease.

16 years younger!! Don't get all pervy and illegal.

Originally Posted by TommyG-inFlaNow

Me too, but my interpretation was funnier in my mind

It is the way.

Originally Posted by detroitm2

I'm a software engineer. Some of my best ideas come while I'm sleeping.

For software or something else?

Originally Posted by pennsiveguy

Wow, amazing story. Unfortunately I can't ever recall dreaming about a current job or work task. That could be good or bad, depending on how you look at it. The only work-related dreams I have are ones where I'm on a job that I had 30 years ago and things aren't going well - I'm running behind schedule, I forgot part of the load, or I forgot a stop on my route.

I think it is a combination of both. I've really been obsessing over a solution and my interpretation is that it seeped into my subconscious.

My worse dreams have been the roller coaster dream, which is self-explanatory, with the track ending and me sailing of into oblivion with the coup de gras being the Alien Attacking Dream: It's hard to kill those bastards, they employ the gravity gauge and drop crap on us from orbit, AND it feels like I've been in a battle all day and all night. Worst. Thing. EVER.

[M_Six]

Had a boss who claimed he kept a notepad and pen beside his bed so if he thought of something clever in his sleep, he could write it down. I've occasionally figured out a problem in my sleep, but it's so rare that there's no sense in bedside pen and paper for me.

On the other hand, I've had some dreams that were so bizarre, they'd make for great TV. Now those might be worth writing down.

[rcracin]

Originally Posted by MKSixer

I had a very interesting experience which I thought I'd share here.

I've been working on a complicated algorithm for the last 2 or 3 weeks and the final resolution of the problem set has eluded me for the last few days. I have been close but upon checking work, it was always slightly off. It has really hacked me off.

Now here is the rub and please bear with me: My current gf is several years (16) younger than me and had never seen The Wire. This is something that was intolerable and I had to correct immediately. For the last 10 days we've been binging it and finally finished on Sunday. She loved it.

Last night I dreamt that I was sitting with Lester Freamon from The Wire in the crappy office they used and he was walking me through the problem set. Once he finished the explanation I awakened and went to my office and made the changes, "Lester", explained in the dream and "BAM"...problem solved. I sat there stunned for a moment the got up and made my coffee.

My general problem solving methodology is to study a problem and all of the information I can put my hands on with regard to it's solution then think intensely and model as much as I can. I can't ever remember a solution coming to me through a dream in this manner.

Does anyone else have this experience? If so, please share.

Cheers-mk

Massive fan of the wire here. Poetic that Lester explained it to you. He was always explaining how the wiretaps worked and then the time when he posed as the phony cellphone dealer LOL.

[vreihen16]

Back in my younger days, solutions to complex computing/electronics problems would routinely wake me up out of a cold sleep at 3:00 AM when they unexpectedly popped into my head. Until I was married (20 years into my career), I used to sleep with a notepad and pencil on my night stand to jot things down when it happened.

I suspect that the conscious brain has pre-conceived artificial roadblocks that it applies to problems when you are awake, and the sleeping brain can be more flexible and creative by ignoring them.

One of my favorite college class stories was the day that we were given our final project assignment in assembly language programming. Before I ever set foot on campus on my first day of college, I had already written boot ROMs and an operating system BIOS in assembly language...from scratch. The professor's credentials in the subject was taking an assembly language class at a nearby state school at the same time that he was teaching it to us, using the other school's assignments/handouts as his own curriculum. You can figure out who learned more from that class.

I had worked the overnight shift at my college job the night before, and went straight to school for an 8 AM physics class (feel free to cringe, millennials) and a 10 AM sociology class before my 2 PM assembly language class.

The instructor handed out the final project assignment, and proceeded to diagram on the board how he recommended that the class attack the logic to build a Conway's Game of Life simulator...in 80x25 characters because graphics cards hadn't been invented yet. Build a matrix in memory, send it to the display, update for the next generation...ZZZzzzzzzz. Ten minutes into the class, and I was out COLD on my desk.

About 5 minutes before the class ended, he woke me up with a slap on my desk and said "Isn't that right?" as if I were awake the whole time paying attention to his diagrams/logic on the chalkboard. I took a quick look at the sprawling mess that he drew, and said that the work that he was so proud of was one way to attack the problem. I then spent the last five minutes of class explaining the extremely simple/creative way that I would do it. When I had finished explaining it, I asked if he had coded it yet. He smugly said that whoever finished it first was going to be his final assignment at the other school.

Long story short, a half hour nap in class was plenty of recovery time to walk down to the computer lab and start coding. Twenty minutes later, I walked into his office, handed him a floppy disk with the source code and a compiled executable, and told him that it was my pleasure to code his final project for him. He handed the disk back with an A grade at the start of our next class. The rest of the class had three weeks to code/submit the assignment, and only one other student in the class got it to run. Ironically, that other student got me into my job of the past 35 years, and we worked together for 25 years before he left.

Anyway, I have to agree with detroitm2 that my best programming work comes while I'm sleeping.....

[1and1]

I like to think it was just your brain tired of waiting for your conscious self to catch up...


Really tho, there are many examples of the brain using sleep to work through problems. You're fortunate that you remembered after waking up...

[Hawkeye]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Had a boss who claimed he kept a notepad and pen beside his bed so if he thought of something clever in his sleep, he could write it down. I've occasionally figured out a problem in my sleep, but it's so rare that there's no sense in bedside pen and paper for me.

On the other hand, I've had some dreams that were so bizarre, they'd make for great TV. Now those might be worth writing down.

Reminds me of Mitch Hedberg.... said he kept a pen and paper by the bed to write down jokes... and if he didn't have one he would have to convince himself it wasn't really funny so he didn't have to get up.

[UncleWede]

like vreihen16 and detroitm2, IT problems plague my sleep, but answers also come from there.

This week I was struggling to understand how I was going to connect a brand new SAN to a switch I hadn't configured completely yet for iSCSI.

DUH, you just need the MANAGMENT port connected to a switch you can use to configure it, AND it needs that management port on the corporate network anyways to access NTP and SMTP.


While sleeping, all the conscious clutter (anxiety that I would screw it up, that I would reveal I have no clue WTF I'm doing with this project) went away, and there was the answer. It never should have even been an issue.

Now, do you think if I put VMWare for Dummies under my pillow . . .

[Darth One]

Originally Posted by King Rudi

I've been a prophetic dreamer since I was a wee lad. There have beena great many number of times that answers have come to me in a dream. The most memorable was asking a girlfriend who Tommy was straight out of waking up. Needless to say, Tommy had been keeping her warm for me. Had no clue who Tommy was, but she had no choice to but confess. The look on her face when I asked. This was a time before cell phones as well.

Leads for jobs, solutions for problems at work, etc. This happens to me fairly often.

Originally Posted by TommyG-inFlaNow

...

Are you the Tommy from Rudi’s dream?!

[Darth One]

I dreamed last night that I killed someone and spent the rest of the dream trying to get away with murder...i hope I’m not a prophetic dreamer

[FastF30]

Not a dream but.... This past year I reset my phone and forgot what account I used for the cloud to get all my contacts back... Just couldn't remember... weeks later sitting on my balcony totally relaxing it just popped in my head... funny how the mind works...

[dreamingat30fps]

I don't have dreams very often anymore (at least not that I can remember having a dream when I wake up). I also don't do much programming. However back when I did I would OFTEN find solutions to my programming problems while sleeping. I could be trying to figure out something all day then while sleeping a ridiculously simple solution would come to me.

I think it probably has more to do with letting your mind wander and stop focusing on that one thing that may allow it to find the solution. I would often just walk away from my programming and go do something else if I got stuck.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by UncleWede

This week I was struggling to understand how I was going to connect a brand new SAN to a switch I hadn't configured completely yet for iSCSI.

Did you remember MTU=9000 when programming the iSCSI switch ports?

Now, do you think if I put VMWare for Dummies under my pillow . . .

Been using it for 10+ years, and built two ESXi server farms with five SANs and hot vMotion of running VMs all over the place. The only thing that confuses me with VMware is that they keep changing product branding on the individual components, so you need a reference matrix of product names to read their docs and figure out what vCenter is called this week.....

[shimmy23]

I haven't had dreams like this relative to work but I have for physical things such as:

Windsurf water starts
Bicycle wheelies
540 rodeos

Not sure why this happens but I'll dream it then do it like I always knew how to. It continues to amaze my wife

[yco]

im not expert or something MK but subconscious part is like a big library that as long as its well organized and connected to a clear mind.. which i believe what "smart" people use this better by the genetic chemicals in their brain.. environment affects as well.. problems or informations can be picked up like HDD on PC's.. during the day because of external things that we need to do, stress, wrong eating habits, sleep quality, noises or internal thoughts blocks most of the information is already hidden in subconscious mind..

depends on the sleeping level (they have their own names as you know) either you have a great sleep or almost at the surface and not rest at all.. just for this reason a good doctor specialized in hypnosis goes to that part.. but at this point its better to forget the "show" part of hypnosis that we see on Youtube most of them are fake.. probably at some level before waking up you picked up that information and brought it with you which was already waiting over there..

i had few dreams were pretty creative i noted them.. but if you wake up from a dream with a thought that disturbs you.. thats called obsession thats another story..

such a nice topic.. reminded me Limitless movie.. was a great movie..

[Tambohamilton]

Wheelie dreams are epic! As are (mountain) bicycle drift dreams. A bit like flying dreams, really.

I've never had an actual correct solution to a problem come to me in a dream, that I can remember. The very few I have been able to remember, once I actually think about them they're comically nonsensical! For me it's 100% letting your mind wander - not over thinking anything, but just exploring different paths in your mind - that's where creativity happens. The more I concentrate and strain my mind, the more rigid and narrow-minded my thoughts become.

TL;DR
I have some awesome dreams, but not ones with answers to problems. My best problem solving happens when I'm relaxed and thinking about other things.