[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/how-to-save-time-while-making-important-decisions\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/how-to-save-time-while-making-important-decisions\/","headline":"How to Save Time While Making Important Decisions","name":"How to Save Time While Making Important Decisions","description":"You may have heard “sleep on it” at some point in your life as the best advice you can receive when facing a difficult decision. But is sleeping on it always the right choice? Science has been wrangling with this question for the years. When it comes to saving time in making decisions, it is...","datePublished":"2016-09-06","dateModified":"2025-06-04","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/author\/mark\/#Person","name":"Mark","url":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/author\/mark\/","identifier":2,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/131cfccbaaff5083caadb2ebb178119fe605ab5a0bdcf4a00e7f2ec170a49434?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/131cfccbaaff5083caadb2ebb178119fe605ab5a0bdcf4a00e7f2ec170a49434?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Reflective Dynamics, Inc.","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/time-management-plans-blog-logo.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/time-management-plans-blog-logo.jpg","width":600,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/save-time-making-important-decisions.jpg?fit=720%2C360&ssl=1","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/save-time-making-important-decisions.jpg?fit=720%2C360&ssl=1","height":360,"width":720},"url":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/how-to-save-time-while-making-important-decisions\/","about":["General"],"wordCount":1394,"articleBody":"You may have heard “sleep on it” at some point in your life as the best advice you can receive when facing a difficult decision. But is sleeping on it always the right choice? Science has been wrangling with this question for the years.When it comes to saving time in making decisions, it is best to remember that no one method of making choices works best in all situations. But what we do know is that you want to be:CalmRelaxedInformedRestedRested does not necessarily mean you should have just woken up but it does mean that if you are very tired when you need to make an important decision you may find you are unable to do so. People may waste hours or days if they wrangle with a tough decision and that process can drain you of energy, making the choice agonizingly complex, and leave you dissatisfied with your final choice anyway.Prolonged decision-making is, in fact, a sign of stress and anxiety. It could be a symptom of a much deeper problem, such as depression, illness, or impairment due to drug or alcohol use. If you feel you have been taking too long to make an important decision then it may be time to take your mind off the matter. This gives both your body and your brain a chance to rest.Furthermore, here are seven articles about scientific research into the ways we make decisions.  Understanding how sleep, sleep deprivation, and stress affect your decision-making now should help you form better choice-making habits.1. Journal Sleep: Sleep deprivation affects moral judgmentIf you are facing a moral dilemma of some type (such as having to decide whether to report someone you know for a crime they have committed) and you cannot reach a firm decision, laying awake for hours only makes the decision that much more difficult to reach.In 2007, research showed that people in occupations that lead to a lot of sleep deprivation (such as soldiers, firefighters, and police) may make poor judgments when they are overly tired. It takes longer to decide to do the right thing, according to this study. You are not necessarily more likely to make a bad choice when you are exhausted, but the emotional stress may make it harder for you to reach a decision at all.2. Sleep deprivation can threaten competent decision-makingIn this 2007 study, researchers found that sleepy, tired, exhausted gamblers make less competent decisions. Whether you are just gambling for fun or making a living at the casino tables, you need to get enough sleep to make good decisions.Of course, gambling is just one type of activity that requires risky decision-making. Any activity that calls for making risky decisions can be adversely affected by your loss of sleep. Experts recommend that most adults need about 7 to 8 hours of normal, restful sleep per night in order to make optimal decisions.3. Complex decision? Don’t sleep on itIn 2008 a study found that if you are facing a complex decision, you will do better to make a carefully considered choice rather than making a snap decision or putting it off after a night’s sleep. The researchers did not suggest that you should try to make complicated decisions when you are exhausted. Rather, if you defer the decision until after you sleep even though you are already well-rested, you are not likely to make a better decision.Trusting your subconscious to make important decisions on the spur of the moment for you is really not productive. Instead, weighing the pros and cons and analyzing the options is the best approach, when you are not tired. Merely delaying the decision for a night’s sleep (when you are not tired) in the hope that your subconscious mind will figure out what your conscious mind does not want to probably will not help.4. Sleep-deprived people make risky decisions based on too much optimismTwo studies published in 2011 showed that people become too optimistic for their own good when they are deprived of sleep, and they are more likely to make unnecessarily risky choices when they are tired. This confirms the “all night in the casino” effect discussed in earlier studies about how gambler’s make bad choices.Although optimism and positive attitude are important for living a successful, satisfying life, the mind must balance its choices between optimism and negativity. In fact, we depend on negativity to help us “keep our feet on the ground” and “stay in touch with reality”. Sleep deprivation weakens the influence of our negative thinking.5. \u2018Sleep on it\u2019 is sound, science-based advice, study suggestsThe results of this study, published in 2011, found that people who had just learned a new set of rules were able to make better choices in a gambling game after getting a night’s sleep than a similar group who learned the game, took a 12-hour break but stayed awake, and then came back to play the game later.Although the study’s findings were presented as evidence of improved decision-making based on getting a full-night’s sleep, it also underscores the importance of sleep’s role in helping us assimilate newly acquired knowledge. In fact, research published in May 2015 and July 2015\u00a0confirmed that we need sleep in order to learn and make our memories more accessible.6. How unconscious processing improves decision-makingDespite earlier findings that letting your subconscious mind make snap decisions is not really a good idea, researchers have confirmed via this study published in 2013 that the subconscious mind does play a part in decision-making, as previous studies had found. What this means is that if you cannot make up your mind about something, then doing something else rather than “dithering” over the decision is more likely to lead to a good decision.In other words, when you acquire new information that you need to make a decision, your brain needs at least some time to process that information. Taking your (conscious) mind off that task gives your brain a chance to organize the information to help you make a better choice. So doing something else for a while is, in fact, the right thing to do in many cases.7. Sleep loss impedes decision making in crisis, research showsIn May 2015 a new study looked at the impact of sleep deprivation on our ability to make critical decisions during a crisis. What this experiment revealed was that when the rules of a game were changed for two groups of people, those who had been deprived of adequate sleep for many hours were not able to adapt to the changes as quickly or effectively as the group of test subjects who had been allowed to sleep normally.These findings illustrate the futility of trying to cope with new information in a highly stressful situation (such as when operating an oil tanker, a nuclear facility, or gambling) when the body has gone without sleep for too long. When taken with other research such as the studies cited above, it may mean that the brain eventually loses the ability to assimilate new information into its memories and choosing processes, and the sleep-deprived mind thus heads into a stressful situation using the wrong sets of learned rules.What This Means for Managing Your Personal TimeWe have to recognize when we have the energy, the information, and the correct balance of feelings to make good decisions. That means training yourself to get some sleep when you are tired before making an important decision. Even taking an hour-long nap can improve your memory performance, and that helps you make better decisions more quickly.We lose time when we try to force ourselves to make hard decisions. The decisions may only be hard because we are tired, emotionally exhausted, or stressed. By giving the mind a chance to relax and deal with other tasks, we save time overall in the decision-making process. And using some other important task to distract ourselves from the important decision that must be made is a better use of our time than pacing back and forth or sitting around wrestling with the pros of cons in a state of mind that cannot reach a firm conclusion.Did you like this article?  Please share it with your friends and visitors to your Website.  Tell people about www.TimeManagementPlans.Com.  Thank you."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"How to Save Time While Making Important Decisions","item":"https:\/\/www.timemanagementplans.com\/how-to-save-time-while-making-important-decisions\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]