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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."
I was going to post a rebuttal to this article, but I think I'll have a nap first.
So the famous step:
2. ???
Should actually be
2. Sleep
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Is this really due to the brain "working on" problems in your sleep? Or is this because the hours after waking are when the brain is at its operational best and it is easier to process large amounts of information at that time?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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
Wait for my +5 insightful post tomorrow.
The conscious mind tends to miss details. We spend so much time on the big issues that we don't notice little things. The problem is that we control our thoughts a little too well...if we don't see immediate relevance in something, we drop it. Our subconscious can take everything into account.
I'm quite fond of telling people that they think too much, or are overthinking a problem. They spend so much time fretting about how difficult the problem is that they don't actually devote any time to solving it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Somehow this strikes me as seeming really true, even if just from my own experience.
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that when I take a shower (and go into a more relaxed state), I am hit with great ideas and solutions for problems. This is a very strong, repeated experience for me. I sometimes think I should bathroom tile my work cube, but this "subconscious thinking" thing makes way more sense.
P.S. C'mon, no jokes about what one may do in the shower to be relaxed. I preemptively strike at you!
"In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with."
Ya, riiiight.
Acutally all you are doing is giving the subliminal programming messages more time to take effect on your mind. Once the unconscious takeover is complete the "sheep" no longer complain.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
This fits in nicely with another finding that seems amazing when you first hear about it, but is obviously true:
People spend more conscious thinking time on a choice when it doesn't really matter.
Hard to believe, right? You'd think we would think long and hard about things that matter (in the sense that one or the other of the choices will be far better or worse than the other) and not waste time on choices where the outcome is pretty much the same regardless of what we decided. But that's not, in fact, how we operate.
If you give people a choice between, say, being paid a dollar or getting hit with a stick, they make up their minds much quicker than if (to choose an example at the other end of the spectrum) you let them pick a candy out of a box of identical chocolates. You can even induce the effect; people will eat potato chips out of a bag one after another without even looking at them, but if you spread the same chips out on the table and ask "which chip do you want to eat next?" so that it becomes something they have to decide they will generally slow to a crawl.
--MarkusQ
The real conclusion is that if you give someone all the information they need to make a complex decision, then you tell them they're going to have to make a decision after you make them run through a set of distractions... They'll make the right decision.
If they don't know they're going to have to make a choice after their distraction, their subconscious won't do anything special.
This is just the same old story where if you have a problem, go think about something else & your subconscious will work it out for you. It's nice to see scientific proof for something that I've always considered anecdotal.
My last thought: Some people are better at making snap decisions and some people only think they are good at it. It takes a real man to be able to admit he needs to mull things over... which is why high-pressure sales tactics often work.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I can believe this. I typically will walk away from a big decision or problem, sleep on it overnight, and by morning I usually have the answer. I never put any scientific merit into it, I just assumed it was because I wasn't being bugged by a dozen people or being pressured into a decision on the spot. But it is a practice that I use very often, especially when working on programming problems where I get stumped.
On a side note, where are the jokes about waking up and realizing the mistake next to you?
I've seen this happen on more than one occasion. Mostly I notice it with video games. I'll try for 2 hours to complete a task and not even complete it. Then, the next day I'll get it first try. My opinion is that your brain works through a lot of stuff when you're sleeping. I think this is why babies need a lot of sleep. Everything is new to them, and their brain needs a lot of time to process all that new information. I also find it easier to learn something new if I do it over a longer period, than trying to cram everything in at once. Instead of working 3 hours, you work on something in 1 hour sessions for 3 days. You retain the information a lot better.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Happy Friday.
I would be tempted to argue the opposite, actually. The primary criteria this study considered for a "successful" decision seemed to be all emotional:
...people made better decisions - ones that they remained happy with...
Isn't it possible that your unconscious mind is so much more in-tune with your primitive and emotional id that it's better able to determine what decision will make you "happy" over the long term? People make job or purchasing decisions every day that may not be the best for their career advancement or financial well-being, but none of that matters much if they're satisfied.
I've noticed that when I'm really struggling with a decision it's usually because I intuitively feel that one choice is right, but I'm trying to figure out how to make a more attractive choice be the right one. Sleeping on it gives me a chance to let go of the emotional attachment.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
"the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove."
Yes but just think how good a job you could do picking out the right oven glove if you slept on it? The mind boggles.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Many people misunderstand or underestimate the power of the subconscious mind. Your conscious being is only a small fraction of who you really are. Just as the human brain has unmeasured amounts of unrealized potential, similarly the subconscious mind has an almost immeasurable effect on your conscious decision making.
Lucid dreaming is one of the most concrete examples of the subconscious mind at work - people have solved waking problems such as phobias or unresolved stresses by encountering and questioning dream figures. It's a well-documented scientific phenomenon.
This page has some general information about lucidity and use of the subconscious.
I'll start with a personal story. I tend to take a long time to purchase an automobile. In 1998, for example, I decided it was time to buy a new car. The automobile I owned was 7 years old and starting to show problems. I began by doing some reading. GM gave me the opportunity to briefly test drive a number of models at one time. After doing that, I reviewed automotive literature (e.g., Car and Driver) about what was available and what the staff thought of various automobiles. I was beginning to be inclined to a moderately economical sports model. C&D said nice things about the Camaro. Months passed. I read some more. Looked at a Toyota and a Honda. They were a bit more than I wanted to spend. Finally, a local dealer was running a sale. I showed up and found out I could get an even bigger discount because my company was a nonautomotive GM subsidiary. I wound up with a new Camaro at a great price. Over the next five years my mechanic told me the car, with proper maintenance, would last 200K miles. I was a bit surprised at that. Anyway, the automobile was more than satisfactory.
Then in 2004 I was rear ended -- badly by a truck. The car was declared a total loss. Since I hadn't even been thinking of buying a new vehicle, I was thrown for a loop. The other guy's insurance company gave me three days to get a replacement vehicle. I asked friends what to do. They advised me to buy a second hand Camaro from a reputable dealer. That's what I did. I'm still happy with the replacement. Still, though, I think I would be happier if the insurance company had given me more time to think about what I would do. I could see myself going with a new Toyota or Honda, rather than an identical vehicle. Since I wasn't given the time, though, I simply repeated my decision of five years earlier.
People in my area (Washington, DC) are stressed out from too much to do and too little sleep. I see people making all sorts of decisions that are at best unwise, at worst destructive. Sleeping on a decision, taking the "luxury" of time, both conscious and unconscious, would, I think, improve the quality of decision making around here. Some of us do manage to do that. I can see better results by doing that rather than the mode where people are always "on." 24/7 looks like folly, not dedication.
"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." -- B. Franklin
At least for me, this is always the way. After a certain point, there is nothing to be gained from continuing to bach away at something. Do something else; play with something; get some sleep and look at it fresh in the morning. I always like to have a couple of background projects at work for just this purpose. Some of them have actually turned out to be useful.
Reminds me of the job offer that produced my current position. I told my boss-to-be that the offer was good and I was inclined to accept it. But on general principles I would sleep on it and make it official the next morning.
Reminds me also of a spectral analysis simulation I did in one of my grad courses. One part of it just didn't work. The results were nonsensical, but I had a deadline, wrote it up anyway, and included a mention that the results in one section were suspect. I then did other things over the weekend, looked at it again, saw the problem immediately, reran the simulation, got good results, wrote them up and handed them in. The professor was pleased, saying that this was just what a grad student should do. I got an A in the course.
...laura
Screw rationality "Use the Force Luke! Let Go!"
Seems like its not that the subconcious mind makes better decisions, but that the subconcious mind can make your life miserable if it disagrees.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
I find that in the mornings I'm prepared for all out war. Take on the big fish, sue the bastards who need suing, fight for every last dime that's mine, buy low sell high, haggle with the insurance company for lower premiums, uphold civil liberties, take the principled stand.
At night? Be cautious. Don't make noise. Try to work things out amicably. Or just surrender. Run from the fights. Sure, you can search my bag, officer.
Knowing that I am this way, how can I make any decision at all that I can live with? Just bust a fuck-it, I guess.
That isn't to say you can't figure stuff out while asleep. I'm still glad my brain decided to solve a differential equation while sleeping. I sure wasted enough time working on it awake.
So who know. Maybe it's a constantly changing mix of solving and acceptance.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
A scientific proof that "never do today what can be procrastinated until tomorrow" is the right way of doing things.
The way I read it, they're saying two things: first, that we background-process a lot more we're aware of, and second, that the decisions we come to after an extended background-processing session are the ones that we're the most comfortable with. Whether they're correct or not, and the actual modalities of the chain of thoughts that brought us to that decision are extraneous factors.
More than mere navel gazing.
I had a psychology teacher who pointed out that the term ``subconscious'' is pretty much a Hollywood popularized word. You're either talking about being conscious or not being conscious, that is, unconscious. The writer of the article seems to agree with her because they don't use the term subconscious. Sorry to nitpick, but the word unconscious communicates the idea more clearly, while the subconscious is vague. Besides, I think it's safe to say that if you're asleep, you're unconscious.
Chuck Norris doesn't sleep -- he waits.
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I would think there are enough geeks here to know that!
I think you'll find those results interesting. This is a frustrating topic for me because it interests me far past my capacity to grasp and really chew on all of the research that is being done discovering just how the brain stores memory.
.. its also probably a correct notion .. based again on my (admitted limited) understanding of what is being discovered.
From what I understand (and I'll be cruicified for sure if I'm wrong) , the lag between the point where a memory is retreived based on some sort of stimulation (i.e. you smell a perfume your high school girlfriend used to wear) and the time you become aware you've even remembered it is staggering by brain measuring standards.
Apparently this is the transition from gut instinct to rational thought. If no established pattern exists in your wiring to relate that type of memory to that type of stimulation then "all you have to go on is a gut instinct".
So the notion that you may make better decisions while your brain's initrd is still loading isn't just showing how cool of a machine you have in your head
I'd post a link, unfortunately the article I'm basing this on is in a Scientific American, and that could be one of many. I'm motivated only to post, not to get out of my chair.
Haven't people "discovered" this every few years for the past century or so? I'm pretty sure the Surrealists explored this territory.
Marketers have known this for years. Marketing departments spend huge amounts of money exploring ways to nudge people into making the 'impulse buy' and trick them into unwise decisions. Grocery stores line their queues with trinkets and small items. Best buy is even worse- forcing people to wind their way through a twisty aisle made of boxes of small, inexpensive items to get to the checkout counter. Once, when shopping for a car, the salesman asked me 'What would it take for you to buy this car today?'. The list goes on... and, it seems to me, we are making worse and less informed decisions as time goes on.
Trying to find real information on a product is sometimes very difficult. Instead of making better products, companies make a cheaper product and spend a little more on marketing to promote it.
blah blah blah... im getting offtopic...
I think it's an issue of context. I don't think it's that you're sleeping on it, but rather you are thinking about the issue outside the context of marketing and environmental pressures. Removing something from context generally allows you to see that thing more clearly.
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
The real problem is that most people do not know how to identify the best solution to a complex problem, where complex problem is defined as having multiple criteria where some are competing against each other.
One of the best courses that I have completed was a US Army one. It was CAS3 (Combined Arms and Services Staff School). They taught a formal method which deals with identifying possible solutions, identifying screening criteria (which removes solutions that are not viable), identifying evaluation criteria (which allows you to compare one aspect of a solution to another solution), weighting the evaluation criteria, and determining the best solution.
This is a method where it is possible to avoid comparing apples to oranges, and compare apples to apples, i.e. Car A is cheaper than Car B, but Car B has better fuel economy. You compare the cost of Car A to Car B and the fuel economy of Car A to Car B. Furthermore, because you have identified fuel economy as more important than cost, Car B should be the winner (absent any other evaluation criteria).
It is a little more complicated that that, but that is the Reader's Digest version. While this is not the only method to solve complex problems (including non-military ones), it is one that is not too difficult to use (with practice) and it works.
For further reading, see FM 5-0 (Chapter 2 covers it, but not in much detail) or, if you can find it, "52d Infantry Division & Fort Riley Staff Officer's Guide" (Chapter 5, Decision Briefing Example covers the steps of the analysis quite well).
I recall reading somewhere (back in the day) that in some ancient tribal culture (Bedouin?), when dealing with something important, the parties would first negotiate in a social situation in the evening around the campfire (IIRC smoking something was involved, but maybe that was just me!), and make the decision. But no decision was not final until the next day, when the question was reviewed thoroughly in the "cold light of day".
In this way, a person could get to know the potential business partner or in-law, learn how they do things when their guard was down at least a bit, and find out whether they can get along as people; and get the basic facts and factors of the decision.
Then, after sleeping on it and 'digesting' the information, they could use their more analytical daytime-brain to go over what they might not have thought of the night before. In the end, one might say that each side of their brain had the chance to contribute to the decision. (Since the two hemispheres of male brains as a generality are be less well connected than those of females, I would argue that this strategy may be especially useful for men.
I wish I recalled more detail but it was just a page or so of a book or article, and I don't even recall what the book was about.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Well, sort of.
.01 (death from falling) + .99 (fun) .99 (small number)
A complex decision is a whole bunch of trade-offs, profit-and-loss variables. Each variable has a probability associated with it, and they can cascade together. I use a system of "expected value" summations, and it works pretty well.
For instance, in buying a car there is the price (and the 100% likelihood that you'll have to pay it), a set of features, and a set of unknown costs (maintenance), and a set of emotional value points (prestige, convenience, dependability). Each of the costs has a probability that you'll incur it, and each of the values has a probability that you'll receive it. Some of them are related, and may need to be refactored to make the math work out for you.
You multiply each of the costs and outcomes (positive and negative) with their value to you (on some scale of your choosing) and their probability of occurring, and sum them all up. That choice gets a score.
Compare the score from all of the other choices you could make, and your decision is made.
The nice thing about this system is that by breaking down the fuzzy-factor "value" for each outcome and pairing it with a probability, you see the real cost for each while simultaneously hiding the answer from yourself. Subconciously you will tend to favor the choice you want to make, but be careful that you don't fudge the probabilities.
As a simple example, consider recreational sky-diving. The value you get from jumping -- a rush, some prestige, and maybe some sex out of it somehow -- compares with a (call it) 99% probability of landing safely and a (call it) 1% probability of landing with a splat.
For me, I assign a pretty high value to keeping my skin intact. How much would I pay someone not to flatten my skull?
stay on ground = free + 0 (death from falling) + 0 (fun)
= 0
skydiving = -$50 +
= -$50 - 1/100 (very big number) +
= (probably something negative, and I have to pay 50 bucks).
As a side note, you can see that the resultant costs of a decision and the cost to make it happen are just two labels for the same thing. That is, whether something is a cost or benefit is just the sign on the term.
sigs, as if you care.
There is an old adage in French that goes "La nuit porte conseil", which literally means " The night brings counsel".
Anyone who has heard audio from his lectures or read his books has heard him talking about the difference between the spotlight (conscious attention) and the floodlight (unconscious thought). He often said that most people could not handle more than 3 variables at the same time without using a pencil, and most real-life decisions involve considerably more variables than that. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that for most people a decision made without directly using conscious thought would be superior to one "thought through". The anecdotes /.ers have related above only help reinforce this.
I can't count the number of times that it wasn't until I woke up that I realized sleeping with the girl I thought was hot at the bar wasn't quite as hot as I originally thought.
.. this guy must be quite stupid then
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Instead of working 3 hours, you work on something in 1 hour sessions for 3 days. You retain the information a lot better.
There's a big trade-off to this, though. One has to be careful in defining what you mean by "work on".
I'm in graduate school. Lots of maths, physics, etc. It's really easy to get bogged down in complicated problems. I've found that if I go to sleep after working *for a long time* on a problem, then it becomes easier to solve. However, I have to have REALLY worked on the problem. A couple of hours doesn't cut it; you have to really dig in, ignore slashdot (gasp!), get some Zeppelin on the radio, and maybe only take breaks for the bathroom. Only after several hours (at least 4, for me) of that does the "sleeping on it" do any good.
I forget which book i was reading, probably "The Tao of Personal Leadership" which maintained that the proper way to accomplish any weighty task is to familiarize yourself with it. Dig in deep. Then do nothing. At a later time, reproach it and the task will go far more smoothly. Once I read that I realized that in the past several years of profesional development, I had done just that. I don't just sit down and code as if I were running a marathon. I think about it all, then I "mull it over". This mulling really involves little. Just a little directed consciousness and everything falls into place without deliverate thought. As the years slip under my belt, I do less and less directed thinking and the results are always better than the last.
This is the way of the Tao.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
A few years ago, Dr. Herbert Benson came out with his book "The Breakout Principle" which describes and explains what this article is about. Basically, interrupting or changing context (go for a walk, solve unrelated puzzles, visit the gym, meditate) when you've reached a sticking point in a project will increase your effectiveness when you return to your task. Benson attributes this to bursts of nitric oxide in your brain, IIRC.
When we consider how much really occurs inside us without conscious thought, is this any surprise? Try walking up and down the stairs while consciously thinking about how you're doing it. Or how about language- your comprehension and speaking of your native tongue is largely unconscious as well.
Next time you're stuck in a coding problem, try it out. Go enjoy some absorbing activity for perhaps as little as 15 minutes, making sure to change conscious contexts, and then come back to your original task with a fresh viewpoint.
When making big decisions, I sometimes make exhaustive analytical charts in which I list factors making a choice, numerically weight factors in relationship to each other, and assign values for how each option satisfies that factor.... and then sit back and watch myself tweak and adjust the weights and values. Almost inevitably, I catch myself fudging the data to favor one option over the others; that's the option I choose. So I do genuinely evaluate objective criteria as I consider the question, but I give my subjective intuition the final say. And I've always been reasonably satisfied with the choices I've made this way.
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I agree with what you said. According to a book I read about training and learning, it is always best to learn new tasks in short chunks. That's not to say that problem solving is the same as training, but the principles are similar because the brain is being used.
For example, the book said that playing an instrument for only a few minutes is better, and repeating the task only 3 times is more than enough. The next session will yeild surprisingly better results. If I wanted to play a high note on a trumpet, then I would play it only 3 times successfully in a row, and then quit. The next time around, the next highest note would automatically be achievable, and then I would go at it for 3 times, etc.
The idea is that your mind has had a chance to learn the next note, but the body is too tired in this session to play it. So, attempting it while your body is tired would only develop bad technique. That's not to say that the training has to end. If you want, you could train on other aspects, like a new musical phrase, that doesn't involve those high notes, etc.
I'm sure that problem solving has similar obstacles.
That being said, I agree with what the others have said about attacking a problem for a minimum amount of time. It all depends on the nature of the problem, and how many factors are involved.
testing out my trending skills
I've been trying to explain that I think better when I'm sleeping to my boss for ages now. Finally I have proof!
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
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