I’ve just read some intriguing behavioural change research by psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis from the University of Amsterdam that indicate we make better decisions if we are distracted by something else at the time and can’t focus all our attention on the problem at hand. Not only that, but the more factors to be considered in that decision, the better the unconscious is able to handle it and make more positive, reliable decisions. He calls this the ‘deliberation-without-attention effect’.
This just blew me away. How many hours, and sometimes days or even weeks, have I spent gathering information, analysing it, evaluating it all, considering the possibilities and pondering possible outcomes, and still not coming to a satisfactory conclusion? Sometimes I feel like I’ve turned myself inside out with all the worry and thinking and I still can’t see the way clear before me.
Apparently, from what this research has concluded, it is more effective to mull over a problem without consciously thinking about it. I don’t think all this means that we opt out of doing our research and setting some parameters for what we want to consider. However, once we’ve done the groundwork, giving our subconscious permission to contemplate a decision seems to make good sense – ‘sleeping on it’ may not be such a bad strategy after all. Trusting ourselves that we actually know what is best for us may release our minds to generate possibilities we hadn’t thought of, weigh up factors that we don’t consciously remember and make creative connections between information that we mightn’t come up with in our worrisome state of mind.
How can you give yourself permission to engage your subconscious mind to have more input into your decision-making process? Have you tried this already? How successful was it and what surprising outcomes were there?
