Problems at 2 a.m. lie about their size. Let the sun check their measurements before you panic.

At night your judgment about scale is at its worst. Tiredness strips away the context that keeps a problem in proportion, so everything arrives without perspective and feels both enormous and urgent. Nothing about the situation changes between two in the morning and nine, and yet the size will have changed enormously. You are not thinking clearly, and that is physiology rather than character.

If the spiral starts at night, write the problem in one sentence and set it aside until daylight. Make no calls, send no messages, decide nothing. Read the same sentence after breakfast and see what it actually says.