What exactly is decision fatigue?
Decision fatigue is the mental and emotional depletion from making hundreds to thousands of minor and major choices over an average day. Whether it’s something as trivial as if you should hit Snooze in the morning or not or as significant as whether or not to get yourself and your family vaccinated during a once-in-a-generation pandemic, it all adds up.
What to eat? What to wear? Whether to be on or off camera for your next Zoom call? Not to mention all the micro and macro decisions we have to make in one 8-hour workday. According to this AMA article, by the time the average person goes to bed, they’ve made over 35,000 decisions, all of which take time and energy.
It is exhausting, but the quality of the decisions also gets worse with the more you have to make. The more choices, the more it can wear on your brain, and it may cause your brain to look for shortcuts. There are four main symptoms: procrastination, impulsivity, avoidance and indecision. There’s a reason why many successful people (famous or otherwise) with hectic personal and professional lives have a team of assistants around them. The busier you are, the more decisions you have to make – So much so that it ends up becoming a full-time job in and of itself.
I learned about the concept only recently, maybe 2-3 years ago. But once I knew about it, so much made sense! A large part of the low-level feelings of brain fog, tiredness, and distraction we feel can be attributed to the decision-making process we all engage in in our daily lives.
Okay, now enough about what it is and onto we can do to reduce, relieve, and manage it. Keep reading below for a list of tips.
HOW TO MANAGE DECISION FATIGUE
Streamline your choices.
This can look like making lists before grocery shopping, mentally and physically picking outfits in advance, packing lunches the night before (if you’re heading back to the office, that is), or perusing the online menus of a restaurant before you get there. I can’t tell you how much precious time I’ve wasted hemming and hawing over a menu instead of engaging in proper conversation with the person across the table from me.
Barack Obama has famously said that he wore identical coloured suits every day to limit the number of decisions he had to make. I’m sure many men follow the same example, and there’s no reason why women can’t do the same. You don’t have to wear the same coloured clothes, but you can work with a neutral colour palette and mix and match a smaller selection of items. (Post on my capsule wardrobe strategy coming soon..)
Go with your gut instinct.
You know that rapid-fire game when someone gives you two options, and you have to choose in one second? That can be applied to yourself by yourself throughout the day. Give yourself a few seconds to select, and more often than not, you will make a satisfactory choice.
That gut feeling exists for a reason. Try not to talk yourself out of your initial reaction or choice. In certain situations, we spend too much time rationalizing, reasoning, and overthinking what we want when in reality, we choose in the first few seconds.
Delegate.
Others better make some decisions. This doesn’t mean you need an official assistant. Sometimes the people closest to us who know us the best can help out. Whether it’s your partner, kids, or colleagues, delegating the right task or asking for advice from the appropriate person can make your life easier. For example, let someone else make the Netflix movie choice, manage the driving playlist, and select what’s for dinner from time to time. Give your poor little brain the day or night off from the little stuff.
Remove distractions.
The choice to engage with distractions that pull a person away from a project can be a form of decision fatigue. Choosing to look at a cell phone, browse social media, or glance at the television may drain willpower for tasks later in the day. Unconscious choices can be brought into conscious awareness and dealt with accordingly. Your mind will thank you later.
Limit your options.
Too many options are just as bad as not enough. Fewer options also inspire more confidence in the choices you do end up making. When I’m shopping and have a smaller selection to choose from, I have far less FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) when I make the final purchase. I don’t have the niggling feeling: should I have gone with the other thing? Whatever that “thing” may be – Outfit, meal, holiday destination, movie choice, anything.
Take more breaks.
Break up your day to have sufficient breaks to decompress and rejuvenate. I’ve recently discussed how to mentally declutter in a previous post. One of the biggest causes of decision fatigue is exhaustion. Enough breaks and enough sleep can relieve stress and improve emotional health.
SUMMARY
We need to be mindful of decision fatigue, as it is prevalent in our lives and can lead to bad decision-making and burnout for many people. While decision fatigue is not a new phenomenon, the pandemic and its aftermath has complicated life. We have to now make more and more decisions with less certainty about the future and much more ambiguity about what can and cannot be done.
Even with things going back to “normal,” we probably face even more decision-making than we were during the pandemic. The onslaught of overwhelming day-to-day choices that are returning requires some intentionality. We are re-learning how to do regular life now with the added decisions of whether we want to go back to an on-site job, if we are even happy at those jobs, if we’re going to socialize as we did before the pandemic and other big questions.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope that what you have read has educated, informed or inspired you somehow.
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