To begin this piece on decision fatigue, allow me to describe a scenario:
You open your eyes after a restful night sleep. As you lie there staring at the ceiling, you think about your single task for the day – laying 35,000 bricks. The pattern is already marked and you have the necessary tools; all you need is to muster up the strength. Could you do it?
For perspective, the average bricklayer can lay 500-800 bricks per eight-hour day. Furthermore, there are robots capable of laying 1,000 bricks per hour. That means, even if you used the robot, the best you could do is 24,000 bricks in 24 hours. Clearly this task is impossible.
How Many Decisions Can You Make in a Day?
Now, let’s replace bricks with decisions – do you have the strength to make 35,000 decisions per day? I would hope so; that’s the number of decisions the average human makes per day.
Decision science is an emerging field still shrouded with the “pseudoscience” label. Like psychoanalysis at the turn of the 20th century, there is criticism it primarily leverages placebos rather than scientific facts to draw conclusions. However, unlike psychoanalysis, decision science has the advantage of 21st century research and technology to support its conclusions. This piece will center around one of these conclusions – decision fatigue.
What is Decision Fatigue?
Simply put, decision fatigue is the decline of quality decision making as one makes decisions over time without sufficient rest. In the context of our hypothetical scenario, this means as you laid more bricks your ability to continue laying them would diminish. This scenario also demonstrates an important framework for thinking about decision fatigue. Thinking of individual decisions as physical tasks means we are more likely to conceptualize the effects of making mass volume of them.
Imagine how your body would feel after a day of laying 800 bricks, let alone 35,000. At a minimum, your back and forearms would ache, your clothes would be drenched, and your knees would be raw. You’d also be dying for a large, calorically dense meal with plenty of fluids to replenish your energy. The end of a cognitively demanding day – family demands, long meetings, etc. – would feel very similar.
Combatting Decision Fatigue: Decision Autopilot and Decision Recycling
How do we combat decision fatigue? First, we can make fewer decisions. We can achieve this goal through two methods – decision autopilot and decision recycling. Decision autopilot involves eliminating micro-decisions to create routines. Routines don’t require energy to execute once they’re established except that of the initial decision: am I getting out of bed, who am I meeting today, etc.
Decision recycling is similar to decision autopilot. However, it’s associated with preferences as opposed to multi-step processes. The best example of decision recycling is choosing to wear the same thing every day – a notion which Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Barack Obama subscribe to.
Combatting Decision Fatigue: Redefining Willpower
The second way to combat decision fatigue is to change our beliefs around willpower. I won’t define what willpower is but I will state the study of it contributes to the notion decision science is “pseudoscience”.
In the 1990’s, psychologist Roy Baumeister performed a famous study in which groups were tasked with completing an unsolvable puzzle whilst having access to either a plate of cookies or a plate of radishes. Once a group chose to eat either the cookies or radishes, they had to resist eating the other. The test intended to demonstrate the effects of glucose on willpower. The group with cookies spent an average of nineteen minutes solving the puzzle whereas the group with radishes spent only eight minutes solving the puzzle.
In 2010, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck performed a similar study to Baumeister’s. The primary difference was that instead of using different foods, Dweck instilled different beliefs about willpower in each test group.
Her study found the most important factor in the participants’ performance was their belief in willpower being a finite or infinite resource. The ones who believed in finite willpower performed worse than the ones who believed in infinite willpower. With these curious results in mind, it’s easy to see why decision science maintains the “pseudoscience” label. However, I believe it would be unwise to let this label take away from the conclusions we’ve drawn in this piece.
Managing Decision Fatigue
Decision making takes significant energy and the fewer decisions you make, the more energy you have to think deeply about the things which matter to you. As I’ve said in previous pieces, it’s incumbent upon you to give your brain the necessary space to think.
If you don’t know where to begin managing decision fatigue, start small. Think about all the actions you take doing relatively simple routines such as getting ready for work or cooking dinner. Optimize those routines first. Next, write down all your physical, personal, and professional projects and rank them in terms of importance. Then, eliminate the least important projects until you have the capacity to take them on again.
As someone who has gone through this exercise recently, I can assure you it’s worthwhile. Your headspace will clear, and you’ll put yourself in position to have true breakthrough moments.
Be More.
Become Polymathic.
Quote of the Week: “The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” – Robert Frost