> hypnagogic state”. This is the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, when we drowsily linger in a semi-conscious state, experiencing vivid mental images and sounds.

There’s hypnagogia and hypnopompia. Both are liminal states between conscious and unconscious processing.

Hypnagogia is the transitional phase as you’re falling asleep, while Hypnopompia is when you are waking up.

Highly highly recommend trying out liminal dreaming.

It is a great place whence ideas may be harvested.

A lot of the western world is focused on "alert problem solving mode", which is great, because it's given us all of these technological advances.

But I think in the future we should explore more of these altered states, because I think it's going to be a great source of creativity since it's so underexplored.

This is one of the areas where memorization/deep familiarity with material is important.

Sometimes, when I have a difficult problem, I will spend time reading up as much on the principles of the problem and then go to bed.

Sometimes, I wake up with the answer.