Member-only story
Don’t Trust Your Decision at Night
Decision fatigue.
Someone on X said this, “never trust how you feel about your entire life past 9 PM” and I think that tweet captures a sentiment many people can relate to.
Sometimes in the quiet of the night, our worries and anxieties can seem bigger than they are. We might ruminate on past events or future uncertainties, leading to heightened emotional states.
We might find ourselves dwelling on past conversations, replaying them in our minds with excruciating detail, convinced we misspoke or made a fool of ourselves. Emotional regulation also seems to take a hit, leaving us more vulnerable to feeling overwhelmed by negativity.
One thing I realize from that sentences and my evaluation is that we have the “Mind After Midnight”.
According to the “Mind after Midnight” hypothesis, staying up late has an impact on your brain, which can change and increase your propensity for dangerous behaviors, bad worldviews, and rash decisions.
“All the “Mind after Midnight” hypothesis proposes is that people are more likely to make bad decisions when they haven’t had enough sleep and they’re awake when their circadian rhythms are telling them to be asleep.” — Andrew Tubbs, from the University of Arizona College of Medicine
A recent paper in Frontiers in Network Psychology wrote that the reasons for being awake at night can also contribute to behavioral dysregulation: insomnia, nightmares, short sleep, or circadian rhythm disorders can produce nocturnal wakefulness, hypervigilance, and limited emotion regulation; hypnotics, alcohol, and other substances can produce rebound wakefulness, even if intoxication remains; and stress, anxiety, and mood disturbances promote nocturnal wakefulness even as they undermine decision-making.
You may be both mentally and emotionally exhausted at the end of the day, which could affect your mood and outlook. Fatigue can increase negative feelings or cause transient unhappiness, potentially distorting your overall impression of your life.
Additionally, your bodies naturally produce more dopamine at night, which may change your reward and motivation processes and raise your chance of participating in a risky action.
