Bad news hits hardest in the first hour. Don’t make big decisions until that hour passes.

Bad news arrives with its own chemistry, and for the first stretch your thinking runs on it. Everything looks permanent, every option looks final, and the mind reaches for a decision because deciding feels like control. Almost none of those first thoughts survive the next morning. That hour is not lying to you on purpose, it simply cannot see very far.

Make a standing rule that nothing irreversible gets decided for a while after news like that. Drink water, walk somewhere, tell one person. Decisions made after that hour tend to be ones you can still defend a month later.