When do you feel most productive?
I feel most productive first thing in the morning—often before the sun comes up in winter and as the sun rises in summer.
I often wake with a dream still running—half-resolved, emotionally charged, offering up fragments of narrative or insight. There’s a kind of cognitive afterglow: the mind hasn’t yet been colonised by the day’s obligations, and whatever I care about most has floated to the surface uninvited. If I move carefully I can catch it.
Over time, I’ve realised that writing the dream down—and then working it through using Jungian dream analysis is like a warm-up.
It does three things at once. First, it anchors the material before it evaporates. Second, it sharpens attention—forcing me to notice images, patterns, and emotional tones. And third, it opens a dialogue with whatever is just below the surface: motifs, tensions, emerging narratives. By the time I’ve done this, I’m no longer staring at a blank page. I’m already in motion.
Looking back over fifty years, the pattern is remarkably consistent.
Teen years — revision before the world intrudes. At boarding school, the only revision that ever truly worked for me happened early. Not the dutiful evening slog of ‘Prep:’ under supervision, but the self-directed hour before breakfast. There was clarity then. I could see how to shape the material—whether geography essays or maths problems—rather than push through it. It felt like getting ahead of the system.
Writing fiction — catching the thread. With fiction, it’s almost non-negotiable. If I return to a piece early, I can pick up the thread exactly where it left off—as if the characters have been quietly holding their positions overnight. Leave it too late, and I’m reconstructing rather than continuing. The difference is profound
There’s a neurological explanation – something to do with memory consolidation, default mode networks, and the permeability between dreaming and waking. But lived experience is simpler: the mind, early on, is both rested and open. It hasn’t yet armoured itself.
If I wake with something—an image, a sentence, a solution—I follow it. Often, that begins with a dream, written down and explored. By the time I’ve finished, the engine is already running. The rest of the day is simply a matter of staying with it.
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