Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Sleeping On It

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 WebMD, the National Institute of Health. And then, what, live science? You found a cool interview from Live Science? Well, they had a guest post from a guy named Dr. John Grohl. I think that's how you say his name, but he's CEO and founder of PsychCentral, and Live Science apparently said, Dr. Grohl, 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 Grohl. That's what I said, Grohl.

No, Grohl, basically. Grohl? Yeah, you're probably right. But I mean, the extra O between the H and the L is what's throwing me off. But maybe the good doctor did not say, sure, 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? Grohl. So it is kind of interesting if you stop and think about it. I mean, basically,

all of us have had, if not by design, then probably by accident, a period where we were facing some dilemma, some big decision, and we slept on it. We slept before making the decision. And after we slept, it was just way clearer the next day. 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? That's an actual, like a fascinating, amazing component of human life that I just think is the tops. Yeah. And here's the thing is there's more to it than, like, we all know sleep is just great for everything. But there's more to it than, like, but it is also this, than, like,

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. Yeah, supposedly not going to 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 got to sleep. And if you're still angry, what are you going to do? Right, exactly. Like it's four in the morning, we got to work this out. But there is more to it than that, because just human sort of intuition would 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, 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 pastrami on rye, and you go and curl up in the corner for 30 minutes and then wake up and 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 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 Dr. Matthew Walker, that who was a sleep scientist, which I'm fascinated by that job, that, you know, 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 probably sharper than those afternoon classes, but also that going to sleep after you learn for 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. 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 break and you can take a nap and then we'll come back. How about that? Okay, let's do it. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove and, you know, at QLS, I get to hang out with my friends,

Sugar Steve, Laia, Vontigolo, Unpaid Bill. And we, you know, at Questlove Supreme, like the nerd out and do deep dives with musicians and actors and politicians and journalists. We give you the stories behind all your favorite artists and creatives that you have never heard. I'm talking about stories behind their life journeys and their works of art. I love QLS because of the QLS Team Supreme. They're like a second family to me. You're a fan of deep diving and music, everything, all monacking your musical history, and learning things about hip hop artists and things you never thought, then you're a lot like me. But you're also a fan of Questlove Supreme.

One of the things I love the most about this show is that we get to learn from the masters. I look at being on this show as my graduate program in music. Listen to Questlove Supreme on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly

a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring, and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Okay, Chuck. It's 45 minutes later. I've been standing here waiting. You just woke up.

I feel great. Hopefully, 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, 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 as sleeping on a decision without actually having to go to sleep if you can engage in unconscious thought about it. And that sounds hard, but

actually, I think it amounts to just stopping thinking about and chewing over the decision and going and doing something else, building a model airplane, doing your taxes, just something else. Because while you're doing that, the guy Dr. Grohl points out that unconscious thought is not just zoning out, and it's not not thinking. It's just a different mode of thinking and that you're still engaging in unconscious thought about this problem, this dilemma. It's just not in the front 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 biases. If you are, and I think

this is where overthinking, like if you say, oh, you're overthinking it, or if you think something to death or something, 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 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've tried to do this stuff some, is it feels like it 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 might push yourself

to a bad decision because that's the one where you get like a snickerdoodle cookie, you know? Where if you engage, I would do a lot for a snickerdoodle cookie, but like probably things I should not be doing if somebody offered a snickerdoodle, right? But if you just engage in unconscious thinking, your brain is like, snickerdoodle cookie doesn't really matter that much. We're not going 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 go buy a snickerdoodle cookie and still make this correct decision and have the best of both worlds. I could have my snickerdoodle and eat it too. Oh man. I knew that's what you're going to say. Did you? Sure. You knew me. You know me. 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 I guess you found from, was this from the NIH or was this WebMD? It was Dr. Grohole that cited this one. Oh, okay. Let me see if I can hazard this name. Dixterhus? Dixterhus? I think I nailed it that last time. Dixterhus? D-I-J-K-S-T-E-R-H-U-I-S. And I'll bet during college everybody called them

the Dixter. Oh, sure. At parties. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know how you pronounce it. 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, I think in this case, they 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 moving real estate decision like it's got, oh, this one has an extra half bath. That one has a chalk body outline. That's right. I want to avoid that one unless that's your thing. And after reading these descriptions,

they were asked to make their choice following an additional period of conscious thought or unconscious thought. And as you would expect, the unconscious thinkers, well, this is the only part I wonder about. It says, made the better decision than conscious thinkers. But what's the better decision? Like, would they be like, well, he chose 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 criteria was, but clearly something was more desirable than others in the apartments. Okay. Well, maybe it was the chalk outline. Probably was. But the thing that I saw, there was like some other follow up

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 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 in 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 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, I'm not going to make this decision under duress. I'm going to give myself some time and step 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, 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 on under duress. The only thing I'm going to disagree with there is that people are sort of

can ask for and are afforded that luxury because 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, 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 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 that are being made

at these higher echelons are probably routinely bad decisions. Well, there might be something to do with 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're gonna have to edit that out so nobody steals our idea. It's probably out there already. Okay, 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. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.