✨ At a Glance:
Why a childhood ritual – sleeping with books under your pillow – wasn’t as silly as it might sound.
How the hippocampus actually “downloads” new information during sleep.
And why studying the day before is scientifically the smartest high-performance strategy.
🧠 The Elite Idea
We all had little rituals as kids – but some of them were surprisingly close to neuroscience.
For me, it was this:
I used to put books under my pillow before every test or exam so the “knowledge” could get into my head overnight.
It started when I was very young, and I kept doing it all the way through high school and even university – not because I still believed books could magically transfer data into my brain, but because it became my lucky ritual.
Here’s the crazy part:
It worked. I genuinely woke up remembering things I struggled with the day before.
Fast forward to today – and it finally makes sense.
Because science shows:
- Your hippocampus forms new memories while you’re awake.
- During deep sleep + REM, your brain consolidates those memories.
- It turns fragile learning from the day into stable long-term memory overnight.
- Without sleep, your hippocampus literally can’t do its job.
So no — the knowledge wasn’t coming from the pillow…
But the memory consolidation absolutely was.And that’s why I always aced my tests.
(Fun fact about me: I have failed just 1 exam in my entire educational life – 1 out of 10 financial audit qualification exams, and even that I passed on the second go.)
🔍 Inside My Mind
Back then, I didn’t know the neuroscience. I only knew one thing:
Every morning after sleeping on my books, I felt like the “missing pieces” had clicked into place.
Now I understand why.
Your hippocampus is like the brain’s librarian – gathering all the random pieces of information from the day and filing them properly while you sleep.
I also didn’t know as a kid that:
- The hippocampus is not fully developed until after age four
- That’s why we don’t remember the earliest years of our lives
I wasn’t weird. I was simply trusting my brain to do what it’s designed to do:
Clean, organize, and consolidate information overnight.
And subconsciously, I created a ritual that protected the most powerful performance enhancer we have:
➡️ Sleep.
🧬 Integrate It
If you want to learn faster, remember better, and speak or present with more confidence – use this neuroscience-backed approach:
1. Learn the day before
Don’t cram on the same day.
Your brain needs at least one sleep cycle to transfer new info into long-term memory.
2. Do a “last look” 10-minute review before bed
This boosts memory consolidation by giving your hippocampus a clean, focused dataset to work with.
3. Sleep 7–8 hours — non-negotiable
The majority of memory consolidation happens in deep sleep and REM.
Cutting sleep cuts your recall.
4. Avoid screens the last hour
They delay REM and block your ability to remember.
5. Trust the process
You don’t need a book under your pillow.
You just need to give your brain the conditions to work its magic.