Adult life is full of decisions. Sometimes they concern everyday issues, such as what to cook for dinner, but sometimes they are about decisions that can change our lives. Should I stay in a job that I like but doesn’t pay well, or should I move to a more boring one with a much better salary? Do I really want to have children or is it just a social convention? Should you buy a car now or wait to save some more? Whatever type they are, make decisions we can assume that we a lot of anxiety. Therefore, it doesn’t hurt to look for tricks that will help us do this more efficiently.
Psychologist Dan Denis from the University of York, recently published an article in Talk in which he explains what the perfect trick is. To do this, he refers to many scientific studies published in recent years. But the reality is that traditional expressions have been warning us for a long time. Best for decision making consult them with your pillow.
Because yes, according to the studies Denis refers to, sleep is the ideal way make good decisions. This does not mean that everything we decide after sleep will be correct. But the reality is that our brains work much better in these aspects during sleep. Moreover, if we give him some peace, he will become less intuitive and not so guided by first impressions. This is a very important detail when making decisions.
What’s in the box?
In the same year, a group of scientists from Duke University in the USA conducted a very interesting study on how best to make decisions. People who volunteered participated in an online game in which they were asked to choose between several boxes containing items of varying value. Most of them were trinkets.but there were also quite valuable items. To make the game more realistic, they were told that they would be given a cash prize equivalent to the sum of the value of all the products in the selected box.
The experiment was carried out in two ways. First, they had to choose once they examined the boxes. However, in the second part of the experiment they had to choose after a night’s sleep.
In the first case, they chose boxes that had the most valuable items on top, even if everything underneath was trinkets. In contrast, before going to bed, they made more thoughtful choices based on the entire contents of the box. This means that the dream helped them make a decision. without being guided by first impressions.
Make decisions based on sounds
Another very interesting study on this topic was published in 2019. In it, a group of volunteers had to decide various puzzles. Each puzzle had an assigned sound that played in the background while they solved it. At the end of the first phase of training, they were put to bed to repeat the puzzle the next morning.
Some of the volunteers slept unconsciously while listening to the sound of one of the unsolved puzzles. The rest heard nothing or heard only sounds that They had nothing to do with puzzles.
The next day, when they made a second attempt, those who heard the noise of the puzzles managed to solve them. This indicates that the sound associated with the puzzle activated the brain during sleep to make it work. The exact same thing happens when it comes to decision making. That’s why we have to sleep on them.
It also increases creativity
Some people experience a type of daydreaming in the early stages of sleep known as hypnagogia. In many cases it has been observed that early dreams, when a person has not yet entered the deep sleep phase, can increase creativity. In fact, the same one Salvador Dali He claimed that during this strange dream he came up with the idea for many of his most famous paintings.
Also Thomas Edison He made a reference to this. They say he slept only 4 hours at night, and during the day he rested with short naps, which helped him think better about work. As Denis explains in an article for Talkthe inventor of the light bulb was dozing with a ball in his hand. Thus, when he was about to enter the deep sleep phase, his muscles would relax and release the ball, causing him to hit the ground, which This helped him wake up.
In 2021, some French scientists wanted to check if what they say about Edison is true. At least if the experiment he is said to have conducted is truly effective.
To do this, they asked a group of participants to solve some math problems. The volunteers didn’t know it, but in every problem there was a method that allowed us to solve the problem much faster.
If they didn’t succeed on the first try, some of them rested without sleep, while others dozed with a cup in their hand. Most of them put down their cup and woke up before entering deep sleep. Others remained clinging to her or did not wake up.
Repeating the math problem, it was possible to see that those who slept only until the cup fell were able to find the shortcut much faster than those who did not sleep or spent too long in Morpheus’s arms.
In short, sleep is perfect trick for decision making and, in the process, improves our creativity. These are all advantages.
Source: Hiper Textual
