Decision Fatigue: The Biggest Productivity Killer You Need To Avoid At All Costs!
Can you guess how many decisions an average person makes in a day? 5000? 10,000? No. According to one estimate, we make 35,000 decisions every day. This includes everything from “Should I wear a blue shirt or a grey shirt?” to “Should I take route A or route B to reach home?”.
Each decision that we take wears down our willpower and leaves us tired, unmotivated and unproductive. A reason why many of us feel like sleeping the moment we enter our homes after a long, decisive day at work or a long day of shopping where you were amidst thousands of choices.
Let’s understand what this decision fatigue is and what it does to our productivity.
What is decision fatigue?
The term decision fatigue was coined by a researcher Roy F. Baumeister to explain the mental exhaustion that people experience when faced with too many decisions and choices in a fixed period of time. More often than not, it is the act of decision making that wears us out, not the weight of the decision itself.
A study was conducted to understand the concept of decision fatigue. Researchers at Columbia University posed as employees at grocery stores and offered samples of jams. When researchers used six flavors, 30% bought a jar. But when the varieties were increased to 24, only 3% bought a jar. Why? Because the act of decision making became too overwhelming.
4 ways to beat decision fatigue
1. Make fewer decisions and limit your options
Here are some ways you can limit the decisions you make in your everyday life:
- Organize your meals: On an average, we make 226 decisions every day about food. Instead of thinking about what you should prepare for dinner everyday, make a weekly meal plan. You can also schedule your grocery visit to buy everything for the week accordingly.
- Keep lists in handy: Walking in a grocery store without a list means stopping at every aisle and deciding whether or not to buy tens of different things. Instead, have grocery lists and shopping lists to keep you on track.
- Make fewer shopping trips: Why go to the store every day to pick one or two items when you can buy everything in one visit and save yourself the exhausting excursions for a week?
- Limit your clothing decisions: When Barack Obama was asked why he wore only grey and blue suits, he said, “I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
Instead of spending hours selecting an outfit, select an outfit for the next day and move it out of your closet. Remove all the clothes from your cupboard that you don’t wear and divide the rest into proper categories.
2. Use the binary process to make decisions
Charles Duhigg in his book, Smarter Faster Better, talks about the technique of binary decision making. This technique breaks every choice into two options.
Let’s take an example to understand it better. Suppose you’re planning to go on a vacation. There are thousands of options. Do you want to go outside your country or travel in your country? Do you want to go for a relaxing trip or an adventurous trip?
Dealing with these many questions can be overwhelming. Instead, let’s try out the binary decision making approach for this.
- Travel within the country or outside the country? Within the country. Okay. That leaves us with two choices
- Travel to an adventurous place or a relaxing place? Adventurous one. Great. Now two options for the budget
- An expensive trip or a mid range one? A mid range one. Only two places fit this category
- Place X or Y? Place Y
Isn’t this so much better?
3. Learn from the mistakes of the Israeli Parole board
A study found that the Israeli Parole Board gave out more favorable decisions for parole appeals at the beginning of the day. The chance for a favorable appeal declined as the day went on and their decision making power started wearing out. This teaches us some important pointers for scheduling our day:
- Schedule your most important decisions early in the day
- Schedule the trivial things for later in the day
- Have enough glucose in your body before you make an important decision as willpower relies on glucose to function well.
4. Develop a daily routine
At what time should I go to the gym? At what time should I have my dinner? When should I go for a walk in nature? These are some things that are going to be repeated everyday. Instead of deliberating on what to do when, schedule a routine around these habits. Take a walk at 6 p.m. Go to the gym at 7 a.m. and so on.
To make this easier, check out Brutask, a simple task management tool that can help you keep a track of your to-do lists and avoid decision fatigue.
