Remember that old belief saying that sleep is a good way to clear our minds? Well it turns out it’s true, according to new research. And the benefits of sleep go beyond mind-clearing—it also enables us to make the best decisions.

A new research (Dijksterhuis et al., 2009) studied the role our unconscious in enabling us to think of the best thing to do in times of crises.

Research has already shown that the more we think about a decision to be made, the worse the decision we make. According to the researchers, unconscious thought is an “active, goal-directed thought process.”

In addition, the usual biases that we have are absent during an unconscious state. So the idea is to get some unconscious time or sleeping time in order to make better decisions.

On the other hand, in situations when problems are too complex, focused conscious thinking is more helpful.

(via LiveScience)