Short Stuff: Sleeping On It

It’s pretty well known that if you wait to make a big decision until after you get some sleep, you’re likelier to make a good one. But why should that be? Why, we’ll explain if only you’d listen.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. So that
makes this short stuff and this is a good one.
I'm pretty excited about it, Chuck, that's right, big thanks
to web md, the National Institute of Health, and then
what Live Science. He found a cool interview from Live Science. Well,
they had a guest post from a guy named doctor

(00:26):
John Growhole. I think that's how you say his name,
but he's CEO and founder of psych Central and Live
Science apparently said doctor grohole, why don't you come over
and write about sleeping on it for us? And he
said sure, and that was one of the sources we used.
I bet it's a grohole. That's what I said. Grohole,

(00:46):
no groal basically roll. Yeah, you're probably right, but I
mean the extra O between the H and the L
is what's throwed me off. But maybe the good doctor
did not say, Chary, I'll do it. Maybe he said, oh,
let me sleep on it and I'll let you know
very nice. What word are we not going to say
in this episode, Chuck, don't grow whole? So um, it

(01:08):
is kind of interesting if you stop and think about it.
I mean, basically all of us have had, if not
by design them, probably by accident, a period where we
were facing some dilemma, some big decision, and we slapped
on it. We slept before making the decision, and after
we slept, it was just way clearer the next day,

(01:30):
and we probably made the right decision from that point on.
That's what everybody calls sleeping on the decision, right, But
why would that actually happen? Like that's an actual, like
a fascinating, amazing component of human life that I just
think is the tops. Yeah, and there's Here's the thing is,
there's more to it than like we all know sleep

(01:53):
is just great for everything, but there's more to it
than like, but it is also this and like, you know,
you shouldn't send that email, that angry email, like sleep
on that sleep on the maybe sleep on the argument
that you're in the middle of having with your significant
other or your friend or whoever. Supposedly not going to

(02:17):
bed angry as a rule is not actually a very
good rule. We go to bed angry all the time
every night, not every night, but man, like you gotta sleep,
and if you're still angry, what are you gonna do? Right?
Exactly like it is for in the morning. We got
to works as out right, but there is more to
it than that, because just human sort of intuition would

(02:38):
tell you that, you know, you get some sleep, you
clear your head out, you make a better decision in
the morning. It just makes sense, but it's it's more
specific than that, right, Yeah, And we should say that
this pretty much applies as far as the research goes
to important, tough, complex decisions, like if you're at a
deli and you're like, should I have roast beef or

(02:59):
past me on rye? And you go and curl up
in the corner for thirty minutes and then wake up
with your answer. It's actually not going to help. You're
probably going to have the same answer. It's complicated decisions
that this works for. And most people say the reason
why is because when we sleep, we organize our memories
and process information during that period, and that we're probably

(03:22):
taking all this different information, new information, connecting it to
old information, cementing these neural pathways so that we understand
it better after we've slept than we understood it before,
and that we can gain clarity from sleeping on a decision.
And that's how that works. Yeah, and they've also found
and this comes from cal Berkeley, from doctor Matthew Walker

(03:45):
that who was a sleep scientist, which I'm fascinated by
that job that you know at getting good sleep helps
you learn, Like that's why you probably learn better, Like
right when after you wake up in the morning, your
morning classes in school, you're sharper than those afternoon classes.
But also that going to sleep after you learn for

(04:06):
reasons that you mentioned is a really big deal, which
led me to my next topic that I'm going to
do for a long form episode, which is napping. Oh okay,
because I think I told you on our super secret
research trip that I've been started taking a daily nap
last year. Yeah, yeah, and then it's been like life changing.

(04:27):
So I really want to know more about why so napping,
and again it has to do I'm sure in a
smaller way the reason a good night's sleep is good
for you. I would think so for sure. So napping
is coming soon, is what I'm saying. Okay, for me personally,
right after I record and then we'll take a breaking

(04:49):
you can take a nap and then we'll come back.
How about that. Okay, let's do it. Okay, Chuck, it's

(05:18):
forty five minutes later. I've been standing here waiting. Well,
I spoke up nap. I feel gratefully this is an
even better episode had you not napped. All right, So
we're moving on to some even more specifics which I
found super, super fascinating about sleeping on it, which is
the way your conscious mind and your unconscious mind works. Right. Yeah.

(05:42):
They think that maybe it doesn't really have much to
do with the actual act of sleeping or cementing memories
or new information, but that while we're sleeping, we're using
unconscious thought rather than conscious thought, and that you could actually,
if this is true, you could do the same thing
um as sleeping on a decision without actually having to

(06:03):
go to sleep, if you can engage an unconscious thought
about it. And that sounds hard, but actually I think
it amounts to, um, just stopping thinking about and chewing
over the decision and going and doing something else, building
a model airplane, doing your tax It's just something else
because while you're doing that, um this this um. The

(06:24):
guy doctor Groholm points out that you um that that
unconscious thought is like not just zoning out, and it's
not not thinking, it's just a different mode of thinking,
and that you're you're still engaging an unconscious thought about
this problem, this dilemma, it's just not in the front

(06:44):
of your mind. And by removing it from the front
of your mind, putting it into unconscious thought, it seems
that that actually can produce really good decisions, just like
sleeping on something can too. Yeah, and it seems like
one of the big reasons why is buy it if
you are And I think this is where where overthinking,

(07:06):
like if you say, oh, you're overthinking it, or if
you think something to death or something uh, that is
that is concentrating so hard on something on a decision
that your biases are creeping in. You're thinking about all
these different angles and you're quite literally just sort of
overdoing it. And apparently when you're just using your unconscious

(07:26):
thought and kind of parking it for a second in
the forefront of your brain, those biases will fade away.
And the way I read it, or at least the
way it feels like in my brain, because I, you know,
try to do this stuff some is it feels like
it just sort of clears the table a little bit
and what's left is what's important. Yeah, because if with
your biases, with your conscious biases, you're you might push

(07:49):
yourself to a bad decision, because that's the one where
you get, like a snickerdoodle cookie, you know, where if
you engage it, I would do a lot for a
snickerdoodle cook but like probably things I should not be
doing if somebody offered a snickerdoodle, Right, But that if
you just engage in unconscious thinking, your brain is like,
snickerdoodle cookie doesn't really matter that much. We're not going

(08:12):
to use that to weight the different factors in the decision.
These are all going to be fairly balanced out because
the biases are removed. So you can essentially step back,
look at all the different components, all the different possible
outcomes pretty much equally on an equal basis, and then say,
this is the one that's obviously the right decision to make.
Even though I'm not getting a Snickerdoodle cookie. I can

(08:35):
go buy a snickerdoodle cookie and still make this correct
decision and have the best of both worlds. I could
have my snick snickerdoodle and eat it too. Oh man,
I knew that's what you're gonna say. Did you sure
you knew me, you know me. It's man, the wheels
are starting to fall off of this brain. I'll tell
you that there has been some study on this as
far as sleeping on it. There was that one that

(08:57):
I guess you found from. Was this from the NIH
or was this web MD? It was doctor grohol that
cited this one. The Okay, let me see if I
can hazard this name dister Hughes Dixterhuse. I think I
nailed it that last time, Dixterhuse, d I j K
S t E R h U I S And I'll

(09:20):
bet during college everybody call them the dixter Oh sure
at parties. Yeah, yeah, I don't know how you pronounce that.
That sounds about right now, Dixterhus. So this was an
experiment where they would try to get results from having,
you know, people sleep on a big decision or just
a decision that's um. I think in this case they

(09:42):
were talking about like choosing apartments, yeah, and like where
to live. I guess. So they would choose these participants,
they would have a few apartments to choose from. They
would describe what's going on in these apartments, of course,
like you would with any movie real estate decision like
it's scutto this one has an extra half baths. That

(10:04):
one has a chalk body outline, that's right, I want
to avoid that one unless that's your thing. Uh. And
after reading these descriptions, they were asked to make their
choice UM following an additional period of conscious thought or
unconscious thought. And as you would expect, the unconscious thinkers,
well this is this is the only part I wonder about.

(10:25):
It has made the better decision than conscious thinkers. But
what's the better decision? Like would they be like, well,
he shows the wrong place clearly. Yeah, now you have
to actually go live in there in reality because that
part is subjective, right, And whether or not that was
the right choice, yeah, I don't know what the what
the criteria was, but clearly something was more desirable than

(10:48):
than others in the apartments, because maybe outline probably was.
But the thing that I saw there was like some
other follow up UM studies or subsections to the study,
and they found that experts as well are subject to
the same thing. Like you could take an expert and

(11:08):
ask them to make a snap decision about something and
they're probably going to make a worse decision than a
non expert who has had time to sleep on it
or engage an unconscious thought about that decision. Interesting, And
you know what that tracks, because I think one of
the traits of what you would call highly successful people

(11:30):
is to be able to make the right decision quickly
and even under duress. Yes, but that is asking for
a lot and a lot of people who say one
of the reasons why sleeping on it or engaging in
unconscious thought is just by virtue of stepping away from
the problem, you are relinquishing the stress of immediacy. You're saying,

(11:55):
I'm not going to make this decision under duress. I'm
going to give myself some time and up away from it,
And you are just automatically taking yourself out of a
stressful situation, and then by virtue of that alone, you're
probably going to make a better decision. So I think
the upshot is is unless someone has a gun to
your head and is telling you to hack into some mainframe,

(12:15):
you can probably step away from the decision. You're probably
putting yourself under undue pressure, and the more likely you
are to do that, the more likely you are to
probably make a better decision than if you just make
a snap one under duress. The only thing I'm going
to disagree with there is that people are a sort
of can ask for and or afforded that luxury because

(12:38):
I think far too many jobs when they don't need
to require immediacy of action that you know, if you're
like can I sleep on it, They're like, this isn't
the job for you? Then? So like, give me an example, Oh,
I mean any big, high stakes, sort of high pressure

(12:58):
upper management stuff. I don't feel like there's a lot
of those people that are. I think the ones that
are maybe truly successful are probably drawing those boundaries and
saying like, no, we should take our time with this decision.
But sure, I feel like a lot of those are like, no,
we need to we need to figure this out and
act on it. That's probably true. I'm not disagreeing with that,
but I'll bet that they That means that the decisions

(13:19):
that are being made at these higher echelons are probably
routinely bad decisions. Well, there may be something anythink about it,
you know, you know, yeah, I want my CEOs to
go sleep on things. That's my that's my game. Yeah,
we should start a new corporation called sleep on It.
That's a great idea. We'll have to edit that out

(13:40):
so nobody steals our idea. It's probably out there already. Okay, well,
well we'll look, we'll do a business search. Okay, Well,
while we're doing a business search, everybody, this short stuff
is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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