Everything feels worse at 2 a.m. Make your big conclusions about yourself in daylight.

A tired brain is a poor instrument and it has no idea. Late at night the part of you that keeps perspective has clocked off, so thoughts arrive with no sense of scale, which is how a small worry at two looks like a verdict on your whole life. Nothing actually got worse between midnight and two. Your measuring equipment did.

Make a rule that no conclusions get drawn after a certain hour. Write the thought down instead and look at it over breakfast, where it is usually a third of the size. If it keeps you up anyway, get up and do something dull rather than lying there negotiating.