I've noticed this as well. My belief is that when my brain is tired, I'm less likely to get distracted, since my brain just doesn't have the energy to decide it's suddenly interested in some off-topic thing. I feel like my raw creativity is worse when I'm tired, but my focus is better, for a net benefit.

I am much more creative and productive when I don't get enough sleep, and I know exactly why. I usually am very good at ideas, planning and execution, but I ALWAYS second guess and triple guess everything I do. At almost every step I ask and answer the same questions over and over again in my head : "is this right?", "is there a way to do it faster/better?", "shouldn't I do this/that first?", etc.

The problem is that I already answered all of them at the planning stage, yet I have to do it over and over again when the plan is already in motion. Sometimes (mostly when I'm doing something completely new, but then I'm extra careful anyway) that's good, since it allows me to find better ways to do stuff or rethink whether a step needs to be done or not, but most of the time it just detracts me from work.

When I don't get enough sleep (and in my case, that's less than 6 hours a night, usually I sleep 8-9 hours), the questions just stop - I make a plan and start executing it - it's like my brain is too tired to double/triple/quadruple check everything and just says "Whatever, do what you want" :-). So most of the time, I create stuff better and faster than usual - for example, I remember making a quick video for a client while super tired, and he was like "Wow, this looks great!" - I would've never rendered it if I wasn't sleepy, I thought it sucked :-).

But of course, I also make some stupid mistakes some times and miss some details, but usually they don't matter in the end...

Sadly, that doesn't work if I'm too tired, so I'm looking into getting some Modafinil and/or Aniracetam to experiment with (if it's like coffee but the effect is limited to the brain, it'd be perfect)...

Wow, from the headline, I was actually expecting the opposite result. Pretty incredible.

Intuition tells me it's something to do with #2. An effect, not a cause. Moreover, now that you know this correlation, you may also experience this effect through self-fulfilling prophecy. Both by knowing you'll be more creative on those days, leading to higher creativity, and focusing on less creative things on the other days.

The initial result is still surprising to me though. May an experiment to confirm this. One with others involved since we are all are now biased with the knowledge of this correlation. Very interesting.

I've noticed and wondered about the same effect for a long time. The one clear effect going on is that when I'm doing my best and most creative work, I stay excited about continuing to work on it and stopping to sleep is the last thing I want to do, and I end up staying up to all hours working on it. But I think there's an effect going the other way too - a bit of excited insomnia gets me away from normal day-to-day states of mind and feeds back into the capability for looking at things in different ways and making creative leaps.

Steve Pavlina made experiments with sleep and described his result very well. Have a look, it is worth reading.

This is very interesting. All the research I've read seems to imply that under-sleeping is unconditionally a bad thing, but in reality getting 7-8 hours of sleep is quite difficult if you're working a full-time job AND trying to get your own side-project(s) off the ground. All anecdotal accounts from people I admire seem to imply that under-sleeping, especially in your younger years, is simply a fact of life for anyone wanting to achieve remarkable things.

'2. When I’m not sleeping enough, it’s usually because I’m extraordinarily busy at the time. So it might be just good old fashioned momentum...'

This makes it sound like selection bias is also plausible -- those times with little sleep might be when you are, for other reasons, getting a lot done.

Haven't commented for a while.. this post was a bit related to what I have observed. When I usually go shopping after a night shift, I get better responses from the same sales staff compared to when I go before the shift. May be I look more intense and my focus is more?

What about something to the effect of that you are already pretty good at being creative so it is actually too easy. Normally make it harder on yourself with overanalysis and such. Then, when you make it harder just by being more tired, you are able to get in the flow state more easily. I think there is something to be said about opening up new possibilities by just charging through and then seeing where you are. Interesting and thought-provoking article and comments!

I think this has merit. The body operates more efficiently on 15% fewer calories than ideal (low-cal diets are making a come-back for people who want to live longer. You might want to look into that)

So it strikes me that the brain might operate more efficiently on less sleep. Not a whole bunch less. When I get below six hours my brain is like, awww fuck it. But 7 is pretty much ideal although my endurance isn't as good.

But damn I love to sleep. I don't think I'll be cutting back anytime soon.