Every morning we have to make a series of choices just to get out of the door, it seems. What to wear, what to eat for breakfast, what route to take to work, and myriad micro-decisions that can seem trivial when viewed one at a time. But by the end of the day, many of us find our brains spent — we have trouble even making simple decisions, such as what to watch on Netflix. This phenomenon, called decision fatigue, illustrates a curious aspect of human psychology: we each have a finite mental energy for making decisions, and that mental muscle tires with overuse, just like any other muscle.
Learning the Science Behind Decision Fatigue
Decision fatigue is the idea that the more decisions we have to make each day, the worse we will be at making them. Some of this came with the work of psychologist Roy Baumeister showing that decision making uses the same mental resource as self-control and willpower. The author’s theory is that when we run low on this resource, we become either anhedonic, unable to make decisions, or revert to using heuristics in ways we might not like.
The Modern Choice Explosion
The contemporary world throws this to the tenth power. Consider these daily decision overloads:
- The average supermarket carries more than 40,000 items
- Thousands of movies and shows on streaming services
- Dating apps provide virtually unlimited potential matches
- What we consume on social media is like the stuff we eat, and we’re making too many bad choices.
- Professional emails require instant judgments on issues of priority and urgency
- Even selecting an online game — whether it’s a high-velocity challenge or a languid break, such as JILI — contributes to the mountain of daily decisions we must climb.
The Secret Costs of Mental Exhaustion
The results cannot be morally justified as mere foolishness. Decision fatigue results in decision procrastination, where we put off important decisions, usually in favor of maintaining the status quo. It also activates impulse spending, since our mental defenses to marketing ploys weaken as the day goes along. That’s why grocery stores will put things you’re tempted to buy near the register for maximum effect, since they know how depleted your willpower is.
Strategies for Preserving Decision-Making Energy
Once we understand the concept of decision fatigue, we can begin to work with our mental limitations, rather than fight against them. The theory that making too many small decisions exhausts our capacity to make big ones is why high-achievers like Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit everyday and the trope often invoked whenever a female public figure is such as Theresa May seems to limit the number of decisions she makes. Former President Obama had a similar approach and limited his closet to gray or blue suits.
Wrapping Up
Decision fatigue isn’t a personality flaw — it’s a natural system built into our brains for making decisions and can affect anyone. If we know when our decisions are depleted, we can use that knowledge to take steps to decrease decisions that we make out of fatigue, leaving our energies available for the matters that count. The idea isn’t to eliminate all choices but to be more intentional about where we invest our finite decision-making resources.
