What Is Decision Fatigue & How Does It Affect Us?

Ever wondered why it is that often you get home and simply don’t have the willpower or energy to say no and to resist opening up the fridge door?
Why, despite all the best intentions to stick to the plan this week, does it seem virtually impossible to say no to that cheeky glass of wine or the packet of biscuits that is calling your name?

What is it?

In decision-making and psychology, decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making. It is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision-making. Decision fatigue may also lead to poor choices with their food and exercise.

Trade-offs, where either of two choices has positive and negative elements, are an advanced and energy-consuming form of decision-making. A person who is mentally depleted becomes reluctant to make trade-offs or makes very poor choices.

In other words, after a day of making endless choices, decision after decision, and having to filter out an ever-increasing volume of information, which forces us into endless internal monologues of “do I need this”, “I might need it; is this important”, Will I get in trouble if I delete this?” and so on, our brains are simply knackered and worn out!

How Does It Affect Us?

When we get home, our brains are simply too tired to care, so we will always take the path of least resistance in our quest to save energy.
We then need to make more choices: what's for dinner, do we switch energy providers, what do we do at the weekend? What's happening on social media—choice after choice!

All of these things not only use up our time, but they also use up our mental energy. When we use up too much mental energy making decisions, we deplete our mental resources, causing us to either make poor decisions or to avoid making decisions all together.

Like any muscle, when we repeatedly work it, it gets tired.

This might explain why we know what we should do; we might even know exactly how to do it, but we still don’t. For example, many people know that they should exercise, and they even know how to exercise. Then why do they find it so challenging to actually do it?

Decision fatigue is likely the hidden culprit.

Recognising that decision fatigue will occur if you’re overextending your mental energy is so important. We’re not invincible. We have to be aware and notice when we’re likely to find ourselves in decision fatigue.

For example, if you know you’ve made a load of decisions all morning, then it might be time to minimise decisions for the afternoon and save them for the following day.

Personally, I am generally useless in the mid-afternoon period. My brain naturally wants a siesta. Most days I see my first clients at 6:45 a.m. and have very busy mornings. By the time it gets to mid-afternoon, I am pretty tired. Knowing this, the very worst thing I can do is go online at this time. I will have spent all morning mentally switching between looking for patterns in clients language and behaviour and helping them overcome limiting beliefs. By the time it gets to the afternoon, my defences will be down, and I will be a lot more likely to succumb to advertising and sales offers. Basically, if I go online in the afternoon, it costs me a lot more money!

How Do We Battle Decision Fatigue?

So the first couple of steps? First off, recognise when you are mentally fatigued and hold off making decisions until you are “back on it”. (Remember the HALT acronym: hungry, angry, lonely, tired—all pretty much guaranteed ways to ensure you will make a decision you will regret!)

Secondly, cut back on the number of decisions you have to make: plan your clothes the night before and get them ready; get all of your food ready; and make a plan at least 3 days in advance.

Finally, use the DDD formula—make a list of everything that you do in the day—kind of like an idiot’s guide to how to live your life. List everything you can think of in as much detail as you can.

Then, next to each item, decide whether only you can do it, whether it is possible to delegate it to someone else (you don’t have to actually pass it on; just identify whether it is possible to pass it on), and finally whether or not it is possible to ditch it (again, you are looking at whether it is possible to ditch it). This process can begin to reduce the number of decisions you make and, therefore, the pressure we impose on ourselves. I can’t remember where I read it, but apparently we now consume more information and make more choices in one day than our parents would have done in an entire year. No wonder, we simply need to shut down in the evening and recover.