Quick judgments about people and places can be remarkably accurate, and there is no substitute for simple logic and reflection in determining questions like which alarm clock or cellular phone is the best value. But many more important decisions—choosing the right apartment, the optimal house, the best vacation—turn on such a bewildering swarm of facts that people often become frustrated and put the whole thing temporarily out of mind. And new research suggests that this may be a rewarding strategy. In a series of experiments reported in the journal Science, a team of Dutch psychologists found that people struggling to make complex decisions did best when they were distracted and were not able to think consciously about the choice at all. The research not only backs up the common advice to “sleep on it” when facing difficult choices, but it also suggests that the unconscious brain can actively reason as well as produce weird dreams and Freudian slips.