• 51% of small-business professionals end up dreaming about their work.
• Of those 51%, 70% turn their work dreams into action items upon waking.

The above study was commissioned by Staples, the office supply store. If you are one of those people who dream about your work, you might suddenly find yourself jolted awake at 2 a.m., mulling over a missed opportunity or an idea for your next project.

When that happens, I encourage you to keep a small notepad and pen on your nightstand to jot down your thoughts. Otherwise, one of two things is likely:

• You tell yourself that, since it’s such a great idea, you’ll remember in the morning, but you don’t.
• You worry that you’ll forget it, and so you do not get back to sleep, or you sleep fitfully the rest of the night.

One reason that work items creep into our dreams is that we can only store an average of seven things in our short-term memories, and that is what we focus on during the day. However our unconscious has a limitless capacity to tuck things away. During the night there is no order and no prioritization. This allows unexamined items that may have surfaced during the day to now creep into our consciousness.

If the middle of the night is a productive time for you, capture those ideas and then go back to sleep so that you are rested enough to turn them into action items during the day.