‘Everyday’ Intelligence: Mornings are Wiser than Evenings

Link to podcast:

<< http://www.mixcloud.com/antonipeychev/everyday-intelligence-mornings-are-wiser-than-evenings/ >>

The heading of today’s entry is a Bulgarian proverb of which I have been trying to find the English equivalent for ages; alas, to no avail so far.

Upon reading it, you might think that I have consumed a fair amount of ‘wodka’ as it does not really make much sense.

After all, mornings cannot, logically, be wiser than evenings as wisdom is most definitely NOT a characteristic that you can apply to either of those.

Teeth, maybe; but definitely not mornings or evenings.

Nevertheless, I can assure you that, by the end of the article, you will all be like ‘ahhhh, right, that makes sense!’

Or not.

We’ll see.

What the above proverb means in reality (or at least in a Bulgarian’s reality) is that it is much better to make decisions in the morning rather than the evening.

There is, of course, quite a logical reasoning behind the above statement, namely:

When you wake up in the morning, you will have regained most of your strength and will think a lot clearer than you would have during the evening when you would have been exhausted from a long day’s work.

That’s the simple bit; there are a couple of other reasons that add up to the truth value of the statement.

For one, it’s quite a good idea to make decisions in the mornings as your whole day lies ahead of you. Making a decision often gives you a boost of confidence and makes you feel happy about yourself; factors which greatly assist your productivity and mood elevation throughout the day.

Furthermore, if you make the decision in the morning, you will, quite logically, have less to worry about throughout the day and in the evening which will, in turn, help you deal with your daily tasks more efficiently as well as enable you to properly relax at home when you get back from work.

In addition to the above, it has been proven (by someone at some point) that people are generally more positive, energetic and ‘brave’ in the mornings which results in their being able to make a decision on the spot and without making too much fuss about it.

The significance of making a decision on the spot and sticking to it is apparent; we’ve all sat exams that included multiple- choice questions.

How many times, and let’s be honest here, have you circled ‘A’, thought about it, crossed it out, and circled ‘C’ instead, only to find out in the end that the correct answer was actually the one you had initially and, rather spontaneously, selected (‘A’, in case you’re wondering)?

I’m pretty sure that most people’s answer to the above is ‘many, many times’.

Last but not least, it must be noted that, when making a decision in the evening, you feel a certain sense of urgency which predisposes you to make rather silly and wrong decisions.

This, of course, is quite normal because our busy- body routines can be quite exhausting (regardless of how enjoyable they might be) and, in the end of the day, all we want is to finish up all of our tasks, as swiftly as possible, sit down, mellow out and wait until it’s time to go to bed.

The thing is, though, that, at that point, we rarely ever care about the consequences and repercussions that such hasty decision might have; in fact, we often say things like ‘ah, well, I’ll sort that out tomorrow’.

If you make such a decision in the morning, though, you tend to subconsciously take into account the fact that it already IS tomorrow.

Quite silly but, for some reason, incredibly true.

All in all, if you have a major decision to make, do so over a cup of coffee and a sober mind in the morning and not over a can of coke, a Papa John’s pizza and an episode of ‘Desperate Scousewives’ in the evening.

Also, don’t watch ‘Desperate Scousewives;. Ever.

I mean it.