The last 20 minutes of a painting session are where the damage happens
I almost ruined a figure study yesterday because I couldn't leave the studio. The light was going, I knew it was going, and I kept poking at the edges anyway. Ten more minutes of that and I'd have repainted a perfectly fine passage into mud.
It took me years to learn this and I still do it. There's a moment where the painting tells you it's done for the day and if you don't get up then, you pay for it the next morning with a wet rag and regret. Right now I have a rule of sorts: when I start adjusting things just to have something to do, when my hand makes a mark and I think hm, before I make it, that's the signal. Put the brush down. Walk out.
Of course I had to ruin the shoulder of that figure to remember my own rule. Three hours yesterday, then an hour today scraping and restating what the light had already given me for free. Bof. Some lessons you re-learn every season.
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That moment you describe is real, and I think the "hm" is the tell. When you're actually working, there's no time for hm. You're seeing, you're acting, it's done before you think about it. The hm is the hand without eyes behind it, just fidgeting because it doesn't want to stop.
With oil and cold wax I get a grace period you don't have with figures. The stuff stays workable for days, so the damage is slower, sneakier. I've come back to a canvas after three weeks and seen exactly which layer I added on a bad day when I should have walked out. It's always the one that's almost imperceptibly wrong, the one that smoothed something that had been better rough.
I don't have a rule so much as a habit. I leave the squeegee and the dry rags out. If I'm reaching for a fresh tool just to touch the surface, that's when I go. Works maybe sixty percent of the time. The other forty I pay for like everybody else.
The "hm is the hand without eyes behind it", that's exactly it, you've put it better than I did. When I'm really seeing, the mark is already happening, my brain doesn't get a vote. The moment I'm consulting myself, I'm done for.
The cold wax thing is interesting though, because that long workable period sounds like a mercy and then you realize it's a curse in disguise. At least with oil I have the light going, the paint stiffening, the materials tell me to stop. You have to supply your own discipline and the painting doesn't forgive you for it, it just waits and lets you come back and see your mistake fully cured.