Episode 20 · 48:02
Bilingual Dreams, Dedicated Thinking Time & New Jingle Reveal
A new podcast jingle leads into bilingual dreams, better sleep and the need to reserve time for thinking. Dan and Tom explore how ideas surface when the mind has space—and how technology can either protect that space or continually interrupt it.
The episode treats reflection as real work that deserves a place in the calendar.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- Creative selection gets easier when you define the feeling a piece needs to create.
- Language can influence how memories and emotions appear in dreams.
- Sleep quality shapes thought quality as much as another productivity tool.
- Protected thinking time lets important questions surface before urgent tasks bury them.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
So this week is the the first time that you're going to hear our jingle now we have spent hours listening uh to jingles and so thanks all for the submissions uh and we are about to play the winner so presenting and we'll edit this in so we're just going to keep on talking but we'll edit in in now presenting the don't be a doorstep jingle roll the tape stop [Music] foreign so play the jingle and then three two.
And there we have it that's our new jingle thanks so much to Scott he was the winner of our jingle competition uh we'll put his details on the bottom so you can um you can get him to make a jingle for your podcast uh if you have a podcast and also our efforts have not been in vain whenever we say like And subscribe and if this is if this is your first video then you're fine you can chill if this.
Is your second time watching us press that subscribe button it worked we had someone subscribe so we're now up to 11. hey that's alone which is uh encouraging guys or whatever unless it happens to be that you know it was you and me subscribing but I don't think so because I think we're we're subscribed no it was it wasn't me yes it wasn't even a an in-house it could be a bar but yeah well we were inviting a lot so hopefully we.
Checked the bot audience to kind of you know come in their droves and if you know how to select what is a bridge then come and join us yeah if you have the ability I remember seeing you know when it says um uh click here to tell that you're not here that you are not a human that you are a human and it basically had uh this like you know the the bobbing head it had just this bobbing head thing that was able to.
Click and hold or like a robotic hand or something so a robot was pressing it and then it was like yes you're a human what I found out that the joys of the internet and going down different holes I found out that apparently that system is to then configure of like where is your mouse going in the next couple of items hmm apparently which I was like interesting so it's not so much a robot task it's more like.
Seeing where you move your mouse and what you go on on that website or something it was talking about it's more from a tracking perspective probably for marketing or or maybe even ux design purposes very interesting yeah and before the clicking on the photos there used to be the whole like Blurred Lines right of like can you type in the letters and numbers that you see and that actually is a way of digitizing old books so um they've got all these old.
Books that they want to digitize and they've got these like muddled up pieces of the book so they're using that um to codify some of the the physical books into digital by going through excuse me going through a capture um thing so they were able to digify a bunch of books by just having this capture thing on the bottom of forms which I thought was very very clever um but now yeah they've since moved over to the um photos of boats and traffic.
Lights and so forth haven't they which is a shame but um yeah well it's better but it's also sometimes in my so so I can't take my hot take is can you dream bilingually and what does it mean if you're dreaming bilingually so last night Adam maybe I think it's happened a few times to me um I I you may or may not know Tom and I are bilingual we both um we know English 50 we know Welsh 50 before we know.
Nothing so we um I I've I've been dreaming bilingually and I'll have a full-on conversation in Welsh in my dream with somebody and I think it's fascinating because um my Welsh is much better in my dream than in reality which I find is fascinating that's interesting second thing to now is like uh read somewhere or listened to someone watch somewhere that someone was saying what you should do before bed is say um how can I make a thousand pounds and.
Then go to sleep basically that gives your subconscious the thought of money making so it can start to um dream and meditate on um making money so I've tried it but I've come up with no extra ideas but um want one idea that is a lot along the Welsh angle is if we did so you may be familiar with Cameo Cameo is a paid system where you ask celebrities for birthday shout outs or business promos and I was thinking it'd be great to just.
Take that and do Welsh versions of it because there's no Welsh infrastructure for Welsh advertising like Google ads you can't actually do Welsh Google ads because they don't support Welsh as a language so if you were able to create something where it is in Welsh then it makes sense and as you'll see later on we actually have our first sponsor as well for the podcast so thanks to our sponsor insert name here which we'll be playing um and we're going to mix it up this.
Week by um by switching up into into Welsh in the second half of the podcast because we keep on talking about it like Tom said we've said it many times but we've never actually done it so have you ever dreamed in um in Washington not that I can remember but I'm one this is gonna be a short podcast yeah yeah very short podcast um I don't I don't really dream I must admit and and only in the last hmm year.
Two maybe three I've dreamed more but normally it is um nightmares lights out positive dreams so obviously I'm going to bed thinking nightmares so you think about your stories you do dream better of The Nightmare variety or yeah it's probably more processing traumas rather than how to make a thousand pounds uh okay so maybe before bed yeah the dream how do I slay uh uh a demon that's what I should be thinking in your dreams and what what do these um.
What are these nightmare what are the nightmares typically I can't physically open my mouth when things are going on or open my eyes that's another one that they literally feel as if they're glued shut and I could hear people panicking and the Sandman that type of thing yeah I do remember a very Vivid dream a positive one now I'll try and be positive of when I was in it was either primary school or secondary school and I dreamed that was.
In my back Garden at home and I can fly with my arms so I'd flap them literally like a bird fly and it was so cool because I'm not one I know some people can be in dreams and they're fully in control I'm not at all it's more like a movie but that was the one of maybe the only one that I remember that I actually felt like I had control in so it's really nice rather than being on like a roller coaster of.
Getting dragged through different situations that you don't have control over of how you react to different situations you're more yeah I've had a flying one but that that was really good fun and I wish I had more of them yeah the the one dream that or the one nightmare that I have is that I forget how to play drums so it's always like a stress related dream and and typically I assume that it it kind of matches that and this may or.
May not be right for you but it matches up to some situation in life that is stressful and therefore it's just playing itself out in dreams where you know you need the toilet and you can't find a toilet or you can't open your eyes or you can't speak or you can't drum obviously varying degrees of traumatic experiences the not drumming one is somewhat very traumatic for me for some reason because it's like right you're on stage now and I'm like I've literally.
Forgotten how to drum this is awful it's the public embarrassment of some sorts and I'm sure there'd be some sort of psychology psychological um deciphering of the big fat psychological defects that we both possess so how do you feel that those then feed into real life is it because you're in a stressful situation in real life and then they feed its dreams I wonder if it's more because I'm in a good place in life I then I'm backlogging bad experiences and process.
Them in the now or I'm so pushing down the now that I don't realize I'm in a bad experience yeah that it comes out in dreams it could be either way because I know that I did a course recently um and it's called Pathways to freedom and it's of course based in America I wasn't okay I wasn't commuting there it was on Zoom um and it was basically talking about triggers and emotions and basically I learned that I disassociate a lot that.
Is my coping mechanism when you're in a stressful situation and dissociate is disconnecting from your heart and your emotions so you don't actually know what might be going on so then you react as maybe more logical or robotic in you don't have those same sensings or feelings on an emotional level you'd still have feelings in The Sensational level so you might feel sick if you're nervous but you won't feel feel the nervousness you tend to feel the sick so.
Then you're like I must be nervous because I'm feeling sick you basically have to wait until your emotions triggers your body which is more like secondary thirdly or whatever I'm not the pro in it um for then you to understand what's going on so I do recognize maybe my dreaming is from um yeah pushing down because that's my copen mechanism without me realizing that I'm trying to undo yeah I I think sometimes I've had dreams that are like.
Um processing some difficulty which gives me some sort of relief in the sense of like you might have dreams and we'll go deep here now like I have dreams of seeing nine and Tide nine and tied a Welsh for Grandma Grandad um see my uh nine and tide and saying like like well hugging them or saying bye to them or whatever because I haven't I don't feel like I got to say bye before they passed away so I think.
Dreams are a really fascinating world of like one can you uh like process because again we know that the emotions felt in a dream can sometimes still have the remnants when you wake up so when I have those types of dreams I feel like ah like satisfied I even had one recently where um I was like a question before you jumped yeah do you have control in your dreams or do you just observe them like me I'm I'm in the dreams it's kind of like.
A roller coaster once a roller coaster starts you can't stop it the only thing that you can do is potentially wake up but I don't actively wake up if that makes sense so it's just like a I'm watching a film but I'm in the film and it'll just play out and I'll just feel all the emotions that are going on and I can't change what's going on it's just yeah so in that sense I'm observing but it is still me.
And I'm in that situation as it were but you're not controlling the body that you are in that dream um it's more you're observing Through The Eyes of the body of who you are in that dream yeah I can't necessarily control like for example I've tried to change the dream by saying walk over there but I can't right it's like it's a video that's playing and I'm just in the body of the video that's being played I think that's how I would describe mine.
So yeah I think a couple of nights ago um I had a dream where I was like back with a bunch of school friends and we're all like hey like hugging each other and stuff and I found that fascinating because again when when you're um busy with stuff and you kind of forget or not forget but you don't allocate time to catching up with people um you kind of somewhat and this is probably where personality types come in.
And that affects the types of dreams you have so the personality type of guilty that oh I've not caught up with this person or I've not messaged this person in a while um then you have the guilt Narrative of oh they um probably don't care about me or something like that in a kind of like a um insecure narrative and then you have dreams where basically it's resolved because it's actually like oh no we're all fine and it's all good and you um.
Have this satisfaction even though all that stuff is a fictitious um narrative or like feeling or a sense in your dream so I'm I'm wanting to control my dreams more in a way to make it um a space where I process and um release some of that pressure and also can I figure out if I can use it for creativity and idea Generation Um and inspiration interesting because here they don't feel emotions after it yeah I heard about someone that used to.
Do afternoon naps but what they'd used usually sit on a chair with um armrests and then I think they would hold on keys in one of their hands so basically as they drift off I think then you go into the REM sleep but then when you go into court you don't dream I think is the situation so basically as he goes into core he then let lets go of his keys drops on the floor it wakes him up and it's enough.
For him to be like he had a snippet of a dream I don't know if it's like an artist or someone um snippet of a dream drops the keys wakes up and it's enough for him to be like I remember that dream let me draw it or create it or whatever is interesting so they sort of created it as an environment to be like how do I wake up and remember the dream that there's there's also um there's also a way that you can do.
Exactly the same exercise so you're lying in bed you've got like a piece of like you're holding on to like a a fork or a knife and then you're gonna drop it on a baking tray so it'll make a loud noise to wake you up you're in bed sleeping and basically if you um sleep very quickly sometimes that's a sign that you're sleep deprived as well so you you're you need sleep so if you and I think the longer you take to sleep.
The less you are um deprived of It kind of thing um so it's another way of basically checking if you need a lot of sleep on or not um which I find is fascinating but some I I think something that's coming to mind is like um I'm not sure if dreams are kind of like icebergs um or I saw an image that were kind of like likening dreams to icebergs as in like the the reality of uh is a the top.
Part of an iceberg that you see above water that's like reality that we see it but then the dream world is very very deep um and you can explore the dream world as if it is a bottom of the iceberg as in the thing that you don't see and trying to like exercise in that space um is interesting can you problem solve there can you feel emotions that you need to feel in that space for example me I feel.
Um don't know what the word is but like some sort of uh piece once I've had you know dream about somebody that's passed away and you have that like resolve as it were because I feel like I've not had the in reality resolved so then there's the dream world that's given me the resolve which I think is fascinating yeah that is really interesting what what about thinking time another hot take is I think what I was going to.
Say just before you finish yeah fascinating that I know with um iPhones they're becoming better tracking your sleep and you can basically create an alarm do like a window and it'll wake you up when you're at your light as part of your sleep oh right it'd be pretty cool if you could then go actually I don't want it at the lightest part I want to go for a nap wake me up when I'm five minutes into my REM sleep that would be.
Fascinating because if it can trigger that bit so then it vibrates your wrist or whatever to then wake you up to then yeah apple if you're listening you could have that for one for free yeah because um I I I think um yeah if you could trigger based on that because you want to capture the dreams sometimes I don't capture my dreams I don't have like some people have a notepad next to their bed right to write it down I but I don't do that kind of.
Stuff so yeah if you were able to monitor it I've been monitoring my sleep through the Apple watch stuff to try and increase the percentage of Deep Sleep um because on average I'm getting eight percent deep sleep and really I should be having something more like 13 so I'm bit by bit trying to increase that but I don't I um Tim Ferriss the guy that wrote the Four Hour Work Week um he has a podcast with this common.
Flight specialist sleep specialist and the same most most of the time sleep is kind of um the one one of the biggest levers is temperature so what you want is typically you have a hot shower before you sleep and that'll make you go to bed quicker because your body typically is warm it heats up to get to sleep then it'll cool through the night and then it'll warm up again to wake you up so if you want to.
Um kind of like improve sleep that is one mechanism as well as the typical things of you know no caffeine before like in the run-up to bedtime and also you know blackout curtains and that stuff I need to get back I used to um wear an eye mask which is massively helpful because we don't have black op cones so I think I need to go back to that to optimize sleep and that was one of my first health related things I wanted to.
Address in um in the new year because supposedly you can't actually catch up on sleep so once it's gone it's gone so insert medical reference here or something like that so interesting well I'm never going to catch up on the lack of hours I'm going to bed at the moment yeah so all you need to do is increase the hours going forward because you can't necessarily catch up on sleep as such and improve the quality of sleep going forward rather than.
Um sleeping more hours um interesting the other section is time for thinking so one dreams I'm trying to before I go to bed like how can I make a thousand pounds no ideas so far second thing is thinking time are you planning in or putting in a slot of time to actually think and process the benefits of that is it's like remember back in the day when you had to defrag your computer defragging is basically reordering it so it can.
Order it in a way and index it in a way that's um it can be accessed in a quicker way because it's basically like tidying up it knows where everything is because it's tidied into an order um that it's that it's familiar with and understands rather than oh it was just putting anything uh putting every bit of stuff in any way any space or Gap that it could find um so like defragging your mind by having active thinking time.
So do you do active thinking uh yes probably not as much as I should do I tend to do it if I'm overwhelmed or quite tired that I can tell that my brain is sluggish so then what I try and do is either have a notepad and pen or iPad to doodle on to then literally list everything that's on my brain and then I order it I think because I'm a quite organized person and some sort of like.
Tiding sense not in a planning sense um I have to make sure I'm on top of emails on top of text on top of to-do list because that's how my brain works so it's normally if everything's expanding because I know I'm quite driven and like to get things done I need to make sure it's ordered in a way that's more achievable let's say rather than unachievable because let's say five tasks out the blue like for example on Saturday uh kitchen sink clogged up.
Wasn't a task but it's highly important because then it can lead to more smellier kitchens and hassle so that is making sure you create that regular space just to process to know what what do you want to get done and then what you need to get done and mix and match so you feel like the sense of achievement of um maybe doing the sacrificing task that you don't really want to do but you know you need to on top of tasks that you.
Might personally want to get achieved yeah and we've discussed before about the importance of talking to people and kind of like bouncing off somebody else and I remember when I was um I had a bunch of tasks to do and I was chatting to you and um as you know life comes in and adds to the tasks a task list the length of task list so the nice tasks that you want to do that will give you energy end up falling to the bottom and.
Actually what you should try and do is um kind of move those to the top to do those first because they'll give you the energy to then complete the ones that has been surprised tasks or tasks that have not been um planned because they've turned out because yeah you don't plan to have a clogged sink at all but if you were you know for example in your case go and watch some football or go and watch some sport that is a task.
Um or not to do as such but an item that you'd like to do that was on your planned list so if you move that up to the top do that first then you come back and unclogging the sink then becomes easier because you've uh kind of like paid yourself first but in like an emotional um like a a task um situation thing and done something that brings you some sort of Joy or like enjoyment first yeah which is really.
Useful but I think it's very hard because I think I'm used to while School let's say you've got one lesson that you don't like and then you're forced to go to the next lesson that you don't like or you struggle with you're teaching your brain that even though you do one thing you don't like you have to do the next thing so for most of your school life you're taught that so when you hit adult life you have.
To undo what 18 or 16 years of conditioning of yeah no actually if you do a tasks you don't like do something fun because then that helps motivate you to then go back to do the unhelpful task and you might randomly enjoy it or appreciate it more um it's yeah it's yeah it's hard to yeah I think processing it ties in nicely with the app that we're building I'm not sure if you've ever mentioned on this part about the dyslexia task.
Um app or dyslexia friendly task management app that we're currently working on um and how like we've said before reward is a really key part um to motivating somebody to to carry on through a task list because a task list keeps on forever getting longer and longer so you have to always reorder it and re-prioritize to make sure that your energy levels are kept at a certain way right yeah yeah I was just daydreaming then giving myself some time to think of going.
Imagine if we had to update where those projects are each week for accountability they're like oh it'll get me going it's still over there it's sitting on the side I think going back to the thinking space I've started to feel that I'm I need uh more time to think but with like somebody else on the other end of a phone but not talking back to me like I like I was kind of tying you um the day before like.
Having someone around sometimes is helpful not that we're discussing anything but it just gives you I don't know if it's a sense of um grounding you to be like cool you don't need to concern yourself about anything because if the door um if somebody comes to the door the person with you will answer the door so then you can kind of like get into your Zone I don't know if it's that um I'm not sure if it is like a sense of.
Like Comfort but needing just somebody else with you um to give you this the space to just start thinking and have a bit of like silence almost um for then ideas to to come and turn up and it might be because I've exhausted myself with talking aloud and talking out thoughts and feelings and maybe it is internalizing some of it to figure out the next step um as well yeah I think my perspective is particularly if I'm working from home.
Is every time you call someone or message someone either you're trying to get something or you're trying to if someone's calling or texting you you're trying to give something sometimes you miss out on that office mentality if you're not trying to give or get you're just having a laugh and existing with sort of shoulder to shoulder with people to feel part of a squad that you get that same feeling um if you've got good friends or good family.
Um but the difficulty with that is the more older you get you have to plan it in and it's harder to plan that so that's why it's good to have good colleagues but I think that's why yeah creating that space just so we can jump on a hurdle which is like using slack the messaging service that we use that you just hop in sit on there for a couple of hours see if someone joins and then hop out it's like it's if you're.
Hopping into a online office just to hear the other person hum or talk to themselves or make her own joke and laugh at themselves or whatever it's not so um transactional relationships yeah um and it's kind of like sitting next to someone on a bench and people watching um yeah it's not transactional with the person that you're with it's just um to be in the same environment to be alongside somebody um to kind of process the same information but like internally by.
Yourself which I think is something that you typically um don't get much of the the like the down time um when you're distant away away from somebody or a group of people and that as well so so yeah when you go to bed tonight say something or like ask yourself something ask your subconscious something and then go to sleep and chime in the comments to see if you've answered your question when you've gone to sleep or I'm not yeah go.
For it I've noticed that you're summarizing as if we're about to end but we've not done the second half in well well this is this is why I want to like end this bit before our sponsor kicks in and then we'll switch them okay and then the second part is are you actually planning thinking time and giving yourself that space um to like defrag the computer that we are um as well so yeah till next time here's a message from our.
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