Progress in science is discontinuous and occurs in leaps and bounds rather than by a steady and patient accretion of knowledge.1 There are many factors that may serve as catalysts for such spurts of paradigm-shifting growth of knowledge and they include innovation, advances in related scientific fields, competition, critical mass of researchers, and a persistent and critical quest for truth.2 However, such growth spurts in scientific discovery needs to be harnessed, and focused, by occasional “nudges” of the field towards burning priorities while taking care not to smother novelty and potentially paradigm-shifting research. Such channeling of scientific focus can be accomplished by state-of-the-art reviews and inspirational documents that strategize future research. While the former serve to help us digest the mountain of scientific knowledge accumulated until that point in time, providing a new platform to leap from, the latter guides scientists towards which directions to leap. In an effort to provide such directional guidance the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released the 2011 Sleep Disorders Research Plan, a strategic document that highlights some of the most promising directions for future ground-breaking research in sleep and circadian disorders with the ultimate goal of bettering the human condition.3 This commentary encourages the interested reader to read the plan in its entirety, highlights some of the salient aspects of the document, and describes the rather interesting process through which it was crafted.
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