We all know that we should probably be getting more sleep. And we've learned that sleep improves your mood, helps you to learn, clears your brain of toxins, and helps you concentrate. As if that weren’t enough, sleep has another benefit: It can help make you more creative.
To understand how, it is helpful to know a bit more about creativity. When you are trying to develop a creative solution to a difficult problem, you need to find some knowledge that you already have that will help you take a new approach. That means that a big part of creativity is allowing the problem to remind you of things you know about that probably come from another area of your expertise and that are relevant to your current problem. In short, you are seeking a good analogy.