6 Ways to Combat Decision Making Fatigue
Don’t waste your precious decision making reserves on unimportant decisions.
Making decisions is hard. You probably don’t realize it, but our ability to make decisions actually diminishes as the day goes on.
Have you ever wondered why you often eat more healthy foods in the morning, and tend to make poor diet decisions at night? Or why you plan to go to the gym after work, but instead you sit on the couch until bedtime? It’s because you’ve used up all of your decision making reserves, and you have none left to choose a good snack or to make the hard decision of going to the gym.
A lot of people attribute this to a lack of willpower, but it’s actually about decision making fatigue.
“If you have a particularly decision-heavy day at work, then you come home feeling drained. You might want to go to the gym and workout, but your brain would rather default to the easy decision: sit on the couch. That’s decision fatigue.” — James Clear
We make 35,000 decisions every single day, and of these, approximately 70 of these are important decisions. That’s a lot of decisions. I don’t know about you, but I want to have the most decision making capabilities I possibly can for those decisions. And the best way to achieve this is by eliminating the unimportant decisions and making your smaller decisions towards the end of the day. Here are 6 simple ways to combat decision making fatigue.
1. Make your to-do list and schedule the night before.
By the end of the day, you’ve used up a lot of your decision making capacity. Now is the time to use the remainder of it to make a plan for tomorrow so that you don’t need to use any of your precious capacity when you are in your decision making prime in the morning.
Decide what you are going to do when you wake up, and get everything ready that you will need. Decide what you’re going to have for breakfast. Decide how you’re going to make your coffee. Going to the gym? Get your gym clothes out. Writing an article? Put out your charged laptop and headphones. Having everything laid out and a plan made will ensure you don’t have to make any decisions.
2. Put your clothes out the night before.
Some of the most successful people on earth are well aware of decision making fatigue, and work hard to counteract it by wearing the same thing every day.
Steve Jobs wears the same turtle neck every day.
Former President Obama only wore blue or grey suits:
“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits…. 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.”
Mark Zuckerberg wears the same grey shirt every day.
“I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community… I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.”- Mark Zuckerberg
If you don’t want to wear the same thing every day, you can counteract the decision of what to wear by deciding the night before.
The morning is when we have the highest levels of decision making capabilities. Don’t use up this precious resource on something as incidental as what you’re going to wear that day. If you have a uniform, then you’re very lucky. If you don’t, pick your clothes before you go to bed and lay them out.
3. Utilize subscriptions.
So many companies offer subscriptions. They’re a great way to get items delivered to your house without you having to remember to order them.
I have my vitamins on a subscription. Other commonly used subscriptions are:
Anything you can put on automatic is going to help you combat decision making fatigue. Not having to remember to order something or pick something up will free up so much mental capacity.
4. Develop a routine
“You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.” — Barack Obama
Like a subscription, having a routine means things are automatic — you don’t think about anything, you just do it.
Routines are all about habits. And according to James Clear, habits consist of the following: cue — craving — response — reward.
A cue is something that starts the cycle. The craving is the desire for something, the response is the resultant behaviour, and the reward is the outcome. For example, walking into the kitchen after you wake up is the cue to make a cup of coffee — you crave the coffee, you make the coffee, you drink the delicious coffee. Or, your phone buzzes — the cue, which makes you want to see what the text says — the craving, which leads to you picking up your phone — the response, and you get to see what the text says — the reward.
There are so many examples of habits we engage in throughout the day without even noticing. The cool thing with habits is we don’t have to think about them. While this is bad for bad habits, it can actually be really beneficial for good habits.
For example, I have made a morning routine that has now become habitual. When I wake up, I reach for my bottle of water on my nightstand that I filled up the night before. As I drink, I download my Oura ring data. When I’m finished drinking my water, I put on a meditation. When this is finished, I get up and make my coffee. As the coffee is brewing, I write in my journal. When the coffee is ready, I drink it while reading a book.
All of this has become automatic — I don’t think about any of it. This is really beneficial, because it means I haven’t used any decision-making effort thus far.
When I finish my coffee, I know what my next task is because I wrote it down in my journal the previous evening. For example, today it was to finish a particular section of my thesis. Again, no decision making required. I know what’s coming next and can start it without even thinking about it. Now I have full decision making capabilities to go into my most important task of the day — the task that is probably going to need the most decision making abilities, or at least it will be the most important decisions I make that day.
“For most of us, the decisions that drain us are the ones that we make over and over and over again. Wasting precious willpower, these decisions — which could be automated or planned in advance — is one reason why many people feel so drained at the end of the day.”- John Tierny, New York Times columnist
5. Wash your hair every day.
This has been a game changer for me. I used to wash my hair approximately every second day, but then sometimes I had sports or I went to the gym, and I’d have to wash it more frequently. But then this messed with my schedule, and I found myself having to always recalculate my hair washing days.
Now, I wash my hair every day, regardless. I don’t have to think about it. I just get into the shower and do it.
This is a similar idea to the one above: develop a constant routine. You can apply this to everything. Can’t decide which days to go to the gym? Go every day. This is another one I do. I don’t do a hard workout every single day, but I’ll at least do some mobility and injury rehab. This way, I don’t have to think about it. I just go.
If you’re someone who has a relatively stable schedule, you can do things regularly on the same day each week instead of every day. For example, go for a run on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you want to write a book, you could write on Sunday mornings.
Doing something regularly means you don’t have to decide to do it. You just do it. Because you always do it. It’s automatic.
6. Create a meal plan.
This is another one that has really impacted my life. Not only do I have to make way fewer decisions, but I also have a whole lot more free time in my weeks now.
Every Sunday, my fiancee and I sit down and make a plan for the week — breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks. Then we write a shopping list. The whole thing takes about 5 minutes and then we don’t need to make a single decision about food for the rest of the week. We know what we’re having every day for each meal.
Deciding what to eat takes up a lot of your decision making capacity. Think about when someone asks you what restaurant you want to eat at, when you have all the restaurants in the city to choose from. How often do you just go to the same one as always? And then when you’re there, is it easy to pick what to eat from the menu? Do you resort to the same meal you get every time?
Deciding what to eat is hard. Eliminate the need by planning what you are going to have for every meal. Then write a list. You won’t have to decide what you’re having for dinner or what to buy when you get to the grocery store. You’ll already know.
We make 35,000 decisions every single day, and with each one of them our decision making abilities diminish. We end up drained and making bad decisions at the end of the day. But it doesn’t have to be like this. Making simple changes will allow you to direct your decision making capabilities to where you need them most, and to not waste them on mundane decisions.
To combat decision making fatigue:
- Make your to-do list and schedule for the next day in the evening
- Put your clothes out before you go to bed
- Use subscriptions
- Develop a routine
- Wash your hair every day
- Create a meal plan