Wake me up in 20 ...

I've got a problem I have to solve.

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

• You’re struggling with a difficult problem.

• You decide to put the old adage to work: “Let’s sleep on it.”

• You put off making the choice — and then lo and behold, separating the problem from the decision with a bit of shut-eye actually works: You wake up refreshed — and you find a solution.

I think we’ve all had this happen. And while I’m certainly not averse to working sleep into my decision-making process, it might be nice to understand exactly how creating a problem-sleep-solution sandwich works, and just how much sleep you actually need.

It turns out neuroscience might hold the answers — and a group of European researchers have taken some big steps toward finding them.

Writing in the journal PLOS Biology, scientists from the University of Hamburg, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research set out to quantify the degree to which even short naps can lead to “eureka moments.”

“It’s really intriguing that a short period of sleep can help humans make connections they didn’t see before. The next big question is why this happens,” explained coauthor Nicolas Schuck, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Hamburg in Germany.

The scientists devised an experiment in which they asked 90 study participants to do three things:

1. First, sleep a bit less the night before the experiment (30% less, to be exact).

2. Next, consume no caffeine before the 1 p.m. start time.

3. And finally, try to figure out a puzzle — a test in which they were asked to track or predict dots moving across a screen.

The puzzle test was designed to be fairly difficult — unless you knew a secret trick: the colors of the dots were aligned with the directions in which the dots traveled.

After four rounds of trying to figure out the trick, the study participants were encouraged to take a 20-minute nap — something that probably sounded quite enticing after sleeping less than usual the night before and foregoing caffeine for the day.

During their naps, the participants were hooked up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines to track how deep their sleep actually was.

Results? Even 20-minute naps were enough to improve performance and the likelihood that participants would figure out the dot-color trick and solve the puzzle:

• 55.5% of participants who didn’t take naps eventually figured out the trick;

• 63.6% of participants who took light naps — characterized as an “N1” level of sleep figured it out; and

• 85.7% of those who took deeper naps, falling into the “N2” level fo sleep, figured out the trick.

“I think a lot of us have made the subjective experience of having important realizations after a short nap,” said study coauthor Anika Löwe, a predoctoral fellow at the MPRG NeuroCode. "It’s really nice to not only have data on that, but also a first direction of what processes are behind this phenomenon.”

So, how does it work? The theory is that during deeper N2 levels of sleep, our brains clean out the clutter, in essence — making it easier to see stronger connections upon waking. Löwe continued:

“The EEG spectral slope has only recently been considered as a factor in cognitive processes during sleep. I find the link between the spectral slope steepness during sleep, aha-moments after sleep and the down regulation of weights – which we identified as crucial for aha-moments in our previous computational work – very exciting.”

Eventually, maybe we’ll figure out the exact connection.

In the meantime? If you’re stuck on a problem, try the 20-minute nap solution.

You can say it's backed by science. And even if it you're skeptical, who doesn't like a good nap?

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7 other things worth knowing

Quick note: For those of you who also subscribe to my “Big Optimism” newsletter, in yesterday’s edition I rolled out a new way to do the “7 things.” Most people liked it, but some were concerned that I was also going to make the change for Understandably (this newsletter) as well.

In short: Nope! We’ll keep doing things the way we have been here, at least for the time being.

• Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a Human Rights Watch report on conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities. Immigration detention numbers nationally were at an average of 56,400 per day in mid-June, with almost 72% having no criminal history, according to the report. The daily average during the whole of 2024 was 37,500. (The Guardian)

• The Texas Legislature convened Monday for a special session where it will attempt to redraw the state's congressional map to boost President Trump and his allies' efforts to maintain the GOP's grip on the U.S. House in next year's midterm elections. Last week, the president said he is looking for a "simple redrawing" in Texas where Republicans pick up five seats. (CBS News)

• The Trump administration has released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate’s family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. (Associated Press)

• The White House is banning The Wall Street Journal from traveling with President Trump during an upcoming trip to Scotland over the outlet’s reporting on the president’s alleged relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. "Due to the Wall Street Journal’s fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the thirteen outlets on board,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump." (The Hill)

• As rounds of layoffs continue, employment experts suspect that some firms using explanations like reorganization, restructuring, and optimization are actually cutting jobs because of artificial intelligence. “What we’re likely seeing is AI-driven workforce reshaping, without the public acknowledgment,” said Christine Inge, a Harvard expert. “Very few organizations are willing to say, ‘We’re replacing people with AI,’ even when that’s effectively what’s happening.” (CNBC)

• Elon Musk's xAI is hiring an engineer dedicated to creating anime girls. The company has a listing with the job title "Fullstack Engineer - Waifus." A waifu is word used by anime fans to refer to a female character that real people view romantically. It's basically a Japanese version of the English word "wife." The listing said xAI is "looking for exceptional multimedia engineers and product thinkers who want to make Grok's realtime avatar products the best in the world." The pay range: $180,000-$440,000 per year. (Mashable)

• Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner, best known for playing the only son of Bill Cosby's character, Heathcliff Huxtable, on The Cosby Show from 1984 to 1992. has died. He was 54. The actor was in Costa Rica on a family vacation and drowned while swimming, a source confirms. (People)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.