What are Decision Fatigue. 7 Strategies For Overcoming Decision Fatigue

 

All of us suffer or had suffer from decision fatigue and it impacts us every day of our life. The sad part is that it happens without our knowledge. This decision fatigue is often time disruptive to our decision-making process and it can cause us to make unhealthy, irrational choices even when we are aware that these decisions do not bring us closer to our goals.

In this post I will explain how we end up with decision fatigue and how it affects our ability to make decisions, also, I will discuss how we can implement strategies to reduce and eliminate decision-making fatigue.

What is decision-making fatigue?

To better explain the decision fatigue I will give an example.

Let's say you had a long and stressful day at your job. All-day you had meetings, took important decisions for a project and dealt with clients and coworkers. At the end of the day, you feel drained physically and mentally, so when you get home you will seek peace and relaxation. 

Let's imagine that your daily routine when you get home is to pack your gym bag and head for a quick workout before bed. Well, today is different because of your long day at work and instead of a workout that will relax you and eliminate cortisol from your body, you choose an unhealthy takeaway and watch Netflix. This is what decision fatigue looks like.

Decision fatigue is the phenomenon of diminishing your ability to make a healthy and good decision. 

Think of our decision-making power as of fuel tank, when you wake up your tank is full, however, each decision we make drains the tank bit by bit. When the tank is empty our decision-making is impaired and we are left with poor choices.

How decision fatigue affects our lives.

Is essential we start recognizing the decision fatigue symptoms and it affects us in every aspect of our lives. 

Imagine you are the groceries to pick up some essentials. Normally you would ignore the chocolate bar at the checkout but because you had a full day and you feel exhausted you will buy one.

And this example can apply to any other situation like being out with a friend for a meal. Usually, you never order more than a glass of wine because you have a lower tolerance for alcohol, however today you feel tired after work and all that meetings, so you go over the boar with drinking.

Decision fatigue affects us in some ways that we are not able to recognize sometimes.

7 Strategies to Overcome Decision Fatigue.

If you are thinking to avoid decisions, is not that feasible so is not part of the strategies. Avoiding decisions will lead us to 0 accomplishments. 

1. Create routines that make decisions for you

Now, remember the 'fuel tank' theory. Even small decisions will consume some of our fuel. So setting up routines in places will reduce and eliminate fuel consumption.

For example, wake up every day at the same time and eat breakfast the same thing every day, workout every day at the same time and use a regime that you can stick to it. Instead of deciding when you do your laundry, just do it every Saturday. This small routine will save fuel for important decisions.

2. Use automation to your advantage.

The fewer decisions we have to make the better we hold against decision fatigue. So make use of automation.

Take this example, your bills might be monthly so instead of you paying for them all time, just set up a direct debit that will do it for you. Create a saving or investment account that will take money out of your bank account every time you get your salary.

3. Take care of the big decision first.

If you are going to have a long journey in your car, you will usually fill your tank first, you will never leave with a half-empty tank.

Some decisions require more fuel than others, so prioritise the important decisions first.

For example, you might have to find a supplier for your business, so the decision-making process will be a long one and with a lot of research and energy. This decision can affect your whole business, from the quality of your products to sales and financial situations.

So rather than doing this decision at end of the day, you will be better off doing it in the morning.

4. Simplify low-impact decisions.

Many decisions are not that complicated but often time we make them complicated. The more complicated the decision the more fuel we burn in the process. With this in mind, we should start simply some of our daylily decisions and make space for the actually important ones.

For example, if every morning you stay in front of your wardrobe thinking about what to wear for work, you should just build a wardrobe of similar-looking attire. This should simplify your life and decisions.

5. The importance of food in the decision-making process.

Eating has the role of replenishing your stores of glucose. Having full storage of glucose will make it easier to make decisions. Many people can't think straight when they are hungry let alone taking important decisions.

So whenever you make an important decision make sure you have a full stomach and you are hydrated.

6. Learn to say no.

Many decisions comping upon us because of others, like the coworkers who ask as favours for tasks that are time-consuming for which they are responsible.

So get comfortable with saying "no". It might be difficult at first but you will learn to appreciate this new skill. This will discourage you to force decisions upon yourself.

7. Minimise distraction.

Most of the distractions from our lives fail to add much value to our lives. They might seem important to us, or even interesting. However, if they disappear one day we won't be negatively impacted.

Distractions often time impair our ability to make good decisions. They divert our attention from the important things.

Distractions make us examine relevant information and waste precious time and attention that can be used in taking important ' decisions.

For those reasons alone is important to minimise and eliminate our daily distractions whenever we are about to make important decisions.

Resources

In this post we had used as a resource the book:

How to Make Better Decisions: 14 Smart Tactics for Curbing Your Biases, Managing Your Emotions, And Making Fearless Decisions in Every Area of Your Life! by Damon Zahariades