Need to complete a creative task? You will do better with a tired brain: study

Here’s something strange but true: your brain is often better at solving creative problems when you’re tired.

That idea might sound counterintuitive, especially when you’ve dragged yourself through a groggy morning meeting or stared blankly at a blinking cursor during a late-night work session.

But science says your drowsy, disorganized brain may be exactly what you need for a burst of brilliance.

Consider this: in a 2011 study of over 400 students, researchers discovered that participants actually performed better on creative tasks when they were tested at their least alert time of day.

In other words, night owls did better in the early morning, and morning people got more creative late in the day.

Let that sink in. Not only is it okay to brainstorm half-asleep—it might be your secret superpower.

So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night with a wild idea that seems too ridiculous to even write down, maybe give it a second look in the morning.

It just might be your next big breakthrough.

The Strange Genius of a Sleepy Brain

We’ve all had those moments: the ones where you’re bone-tired, bleary-eyed, and barely functional… and then, somehow, you think of something totally brilliant.

A weird idea that actually works.

A solution that dodges logic but hits the mark.

Why does this happen?

According to American author and screenwriter Ron Friedman, it’s all about lowered inhibition.

He explained the phenomenon during a Harvard Business Review podcast, and it boils down to this:

“In order to be creative, sometimes you need to consider some ideas that don’t necessarily feel like they’re on track with what you’re trying to achieve. And so having all these ideas come into your mind—because you’re not quite as good at putting them off when you’re tired—can actually make you more creative.”

In other words, fatigue dulls your brain’s inner critic.

The same fogginess that makes it hard to stay on-task also allows unexpected, unconventional ideas to sneak into your thought process.

When you’re tired, your mental gatekeeper is off-duty—and that’s when the magic happens.

Let’s Talk About the Science

The most revealing study on this topic comes from Marieke Wieth, a psychologist at Albion College in Michigan.

In 2011, her team set out to test whether people perform better on certain types of thinking tasks depending on the time of day.

Here’s how the experiment worked:

428 university students were recruited and first classified as either “morning people,” “night owls,” or “neutral” based on their self-reported alertness patterns.
- 195 were night owls
- 28 were early risers
- 205 were somewhere in between
Participants were then asked to complete a mix of analytical problems (requiring logic and precision) and insight-based creative problems (requiring unconventional thinking).
The tests were administered during two key time blocks:
- Morning (8:30 AM–9:30 AM)
- Late afternoon (4 PM–5:30 PM)

Each participant was timed and had four minutes per problem. Their performance was then compared across both types of tasks and both times of day.

And here’s where it gets fascinating:

Analytical performance? Unchanged.
Creative performance? Sharply improved during “non-optimal” times of day.

Night owls performed better creatively in the morning, while morning people got more creative in the afternoon.

The cognitive slowdown at off-peak hours seemed to benefit their creative thinking—not despite the fatigue, but because of it.

As Wieth’s team wrote in their paper, published in Thinking & Reasoning:

“Results showed consistently greater insight problem-solving performance during non-optimal times of day… The findings indicate that tasks involving creativity might benefit from a non-optimal time of day.”

Time to Rethink the Productivity Advice You’ve Been Sold

Let’s pause here for a moment—because this is the pattern interrupt.

Most of us are conditioned to think that the key to productivity, success, and especially creativity is getting up early, chugging a cup of coffee, and powering through our most important tasks while we’re “fresh.”

That assumption might be dead wrong.

If you’re trying to tackle a creative challenge—brainstorming a campaign, writing a novel chapter, solving a riddle, coming up with a product idea—being fully alert might actually hurt your chances of success.

Why? Because when you’re sharp and focused, your brain filters out all the “irrelevant” ideas. And creativity often lives in the irrelevant.

That stray thought? That weird metaphor? That off-the-wall concept you’d normally dismiss?
That’s the gold.

When you’re tired, your mind wanders more freely.

You stop self-censoring.

You’re less worried about being wrong, and more willing to entertain unusual possibilities.

And that, friends, is where innovation comes from.

Why Coffee Might Be Killing Your Creativity

Let’s take this one step further.

If tiredness helps your creativity, what happens when you override it with caffeine?

Spoiler: it might backfire.

According to Smithsonian Magazine‘s Marissa Fessenden, the focus that comes with a caffeine boost can actually sabotage insight-based thinking.

You may feel more awake and alert, but you’re also more likely to reject or suppress stray, divergent thoughts.

“That’s also why grabbing a cup of coffee isn’t always the best way to seek eureka moments,” Fessenden writes.
“The focus caffeine lends can get in the way of those stray thoughts.”

So while a jolt of java might help you power through your inbox, it’s probably not your best friend when you’re trying to invent the next big thing or write your most compelling story.

The takeaway?

If you’re brainstorming, maybe skip the espresso.

Let your brain meander.

Let it wander into those weird corners.

That’s where your best ideas are hiding.

So, When Should You Do Creative Work?

If you’re a student, entrepreneur, artist, or anyone whose work involves imagination and original thinking, the science points to a clear (and surprising) strategy:

Schedule your creative work for your non-optimal hours.
- Night owls? Try tackling creative tasks in the morning.
- Early birds? Try doing your writing or designing in the late afternoon or evening.
Avoid caffeine right before a creative session.
- You don’t want laser focus—you want loose, distracted thought.
Embrace your mental clutter.
- It turns out a messy mind (and a messy desk) might be more of a feature than a bug.

This approach might feel odd at first—like swimming against the current of mainstream productivity advice—but the data supports it.

Creativity and control aren’t always allies.

Sometimes, letting go of structure is what lets new ideas surface.

The Real Reason Your 3 A.M. Ideas Deserve Another Look

So what about those strange midnight scribbles?

The random thoughts you jotted down in your phone’s notes app after a half-dream?

The doodles in the margins of a meeting agenda?

Here’s the truth: those thoughts deserve more credit than we usually give them.

When your brain is tired, it stops filtering so aggressively.

You allow yourself to connect distant ideas, to reach for metaphors, to play with associations that would never occur to you when you’re laser-focused.

Yes, some of those ideas will be nonsense.

But among them—if the research holds true—will be gems.

That’s how creativity works.

It’s not about always thinking harder.

Sometimes, it’s about thinking weirder.