Sleep on it for complex decisions.

Complex decisions are made better after a night's sleep, according to BBC NEWS: Sleep on it. It looks like simple decisions are better made consciously than unconsciously, though. (Now, how can you tell the two apart? And why does the alert brain seem so limited-- is this another "7 plus or minus 2" result?)

The conscious thought group managed to pick the best car based on four aspects around 55% of the time, while the unconscious thought group only chose the right one 40% of the time.

But when the experiment was made more complex by bringing in 12 attributes to weigh up, the conscious thought group's success rate fell to around 23% as opposed to nearly 60% for the unconscious thought group.

Importantly, post-decision satisfaction ratings were included in this study. So -- if you have a group of people in charge of making complex multivariate decisions, who also have sleep disorders, your organization is in trouble--? Unless someone up above gets a lot of sleep on all the complex decisions everyone is coping with, perhaps.

That question cuts a little close to home, for some of us. It also begs a new candidate interview question...