You know you are a Go addict when …

Just a quick note on the whole phenomenon of “I’m seeing this game in my sleep” - even though the dreams themselves may be disturbing, or lead to restless nights, the fact that you’re dreaming about this stuff is a GOOD SIGN.

Why? The answer has to do with the role that dreams play in turning our day-to-day experiences from distinct chunks of short-term-memory to elements of global strategy that the thalamus can use to communicate with the frontal lobes, and become strategic shortcuts for life going forward.

Some of this has to do with housekeeping. If we’ve had a lot of similar experiences cluttering up our short term memory, dreaming is our brain’s way of clearing that cache. These types of dreams tend to be really boring - where we’re doing the same thing over and over. But at least once the brain has gone through the process, your short term memory will return to a more robust state, and you will have more metaphorical RAM available to absorb new tasks.

The other reason for dreaming about those things is to distill 100 memories of somewhat-similar-but-slightly-different experiences into a single nugget of strategic response, and add that to your current arsenal of problem solving strategies.

So yeah, it might not always make for a pleasant night’s sleep, but believe me - good stuff is going on in there, and you’ll be thankful for it going forward.

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