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Why Don't You Sleep On It?

thefirelane wrote to mention a New Scientist study that indicates your subconscious mind is a better decision maker than you are. From the article: "The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say. Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with."

8 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. A-ha! by Shag · · Score: 5, Funny

    So the famous step:

    2. ???

    Should actually be

    2. Sleep

    --
    Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
    1. Re:A-ha! by Shag · · Score: 4, Funny

      (Oh, and yes, I'm looking forward to the inevitable increase in MAKE MONEY WHILE YOU SLEEP ads, now.)

      --
      Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
  2. Boss... by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Funny

    Honest Boss, I wasn't sleeping on the job... actually I was, but it was helping me figure out how to tackle this project. Can't argue with science!

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  3. Be patient. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wait for my +5 insightful post tomorrow.

  4. At last by MORB · · Score: 4, Funny

    A scientific proof that "never do today what can be procrastinated until tomorrow" is the right way of doing things.

  5. Chuck Norris... by mcho · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chuck Norris doesn't sleep -- he waits.

    1. Re:Chuck Norris... by Saeger · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thanks for making me waste 3 minutes of my life figuring out why Chuck Norris jokes are suddenly funny. I call lame-meme.

      --
      Power to the Peaceful
  6. Re:Brighter in the morning? by angst_ridden_hipster · · Score: 4, Funny

    Heh.

    I've had variants of this.

    Once, many, many years ago, (for reference, I had just gotten a brand new Epson MX-80 printer for the mighty TRS-80 model I), I was working on some complex algorithm or another. I mean, in those days, a complex algorithm was pretty simple by today's standards, but didn't have much memory to work with, so you had to try to be clever.

    In any case, went to sleep around 3am, exhausted. Immediately had a dream where the solution came to me. In the dream, I wrote it, tested it, and saved the file. But then I realized in the dream that I was asleep, so saving to a dream drive wouldn't work -- when I woke up again, it would be gone. So the solution was to print it. Somehow, in dream logic, the printout was more persistent.

    The next morning, I knew I had to check the printer for something. Unfortunately, I found nothing there. I couldn't remember why I needed to check, although I felt really let down that there was no print out.

    I gradually reconstructed the dream, and even got back to the solution I had come up with. Turned out to be incorrect, but got me on the right track ...

    --
    Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
    www.fogbound.net