Interesting to see this article and the comments here on how everyone's experience varies.
This happens to me when I go to bed while thinking hard on a specific problem, usually related to my startup.
It starts off awake with regular thinking, but then at some point it becomes surreal and events that have no cause and effect or basis in reality start occuring.
When I feel an "aha" moment where I become of the surreal nature of my recent thoughts, my memories cease and I assume I transition to real sleep.
In some cases, I wake up and when I check the time my 30 minutes of "thinking" actually occured over ~3 hours.
I find it fun, and as part of my self sleep experiments I try to even recreate it.
This is at least a once a month occurrence, usually weekly+ when I'm working on a big new project. I'll feel like I spent the whole night thinking about how to fix X and only got 3 hours of sleep, but in reality I got more than 6
This happens to me when I go to bed while thinking hard on a specific problem, usually related to my startup.
It starts off awake with regular thinking, but then at some point it becomes surreal and events that have no cause and effect or basis in reality start occuring.
When I feel an "aha" moment where I become of the surreal nature of my recent thoughts, my memories cease and I assume I transition to real sleep.
In some cases, I wake up and when I check the time my 30 minutes of "thinking" actually occured over ~3 hours.
I find it fun, and as part of my self sleep experiments I try to even recreate it.