Don’t Make Decisions at 2 AM
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How many times have we done that?
We wake up in the middle of the night, and an issue we've been grappling with grabs hold. And we begin to turn it over in our heads. And over. And over. And over.
And the perceived gravity of the issue becomes more and more serious. Something that was concerning but manageable just a few hours earlier now seems desperate. The consequences seem ever so pronounced.
Why? Because the middle of the night is never the best time to judge, assess, evaluate. We're not level headed, we don't think clearly. As a result, we find ourselves picking at the issue, identifying and magnifying all potential outcomes, especially the negative ones.
(And the bigger the risk you're taking in your life e.g. starting a business, executing a new project, moving towards a critical decision, etc., the more pronounced these episodes become.)
The thing is, in just another few hours, with a few more hours of sleep in us, that desperate situation suddenly becomes far less desperate, more reasonable, more manageable.
Because once we're rested, once we have our mental faculties in full working order, once aren't swallowed by our thoughts, we can think clearly. Be more balanced. Make better decisions.
Those 2 AM decisions, more often than not, don't help us. Those 8 AM ones usually do.
