Ep 146 | Handling Decision Fatigue

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into today's topic. Today I'd like to discuss decision fatigue, the concept of decision fatigue. What is decision fatigue? Decision fatigue is this, this, this different or strange sort of psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person's ability to make sound decisions deteriorates over time. When I say over time, maybe it deteriorates after a long session of decision-making or just a long day where they're task switching or, or are burned out a bit, but The decision fatigue specifically pertains to just making poorer and poorer quality decisions as the day progresses, as time wears on. It's the idea that the quality of your decisions can degrade as you make more and more choices throughout your day, especially if these choices are complex or require a lot more mental effort. So there's, there's lots of factors that contribute to decision fatigue. Uh, the first that comes to mind for me, just reduced willpower. You know, as a, as a mentor of mine, uh, once, once used to always say, uh, willpower is not on will call. Willpower is closely related to decision-making. So when decision fatigue sets in, it can lead to a decrease in willpower, which is making it harder to resist temptations and stick to goals. And so the quality of decision tends to decrease. Other factors that contribute to decision fatigue, just limited mental energy. Making decisions consumes mental energy. I mean, for those of us that are in business, as many of our listeners are, Uh, I, I'm going to guess that on those days when you're making decision after decision after decision, as time wears on, you feel mentally drained. Just like if you were physically burned out from training, you mentally burn out as well. And so as you make more choices during your day, your mental energy is going to gradually deplete. Another factor to decision fatigue is actually decision avoidance. When people experience decision fatigue, they may actively avoid making decisions by deferring choices, by procrastinating, by relying on default options or seeking others to make the choices for them. The last factor I see contribute to decision fatigue is just general stress and anxiety. The stress of having to make numerous decisions can contribute to decision fatigue, and it can increase feelings of, of overwhelm. So decision fatigue is most common when individuals are confronted with a high volume of decisions over a relatively short period of time. And I want to give you a great example as to a place where this has occurred and studies that have been done around it to kind of prove it out. In the court systems, I think that the two studies that I reviewed, one was in the Israeli court system and another was in the British court system. What they found was that a, a criminal or someone charged with something was 3 to 6 times less likely to receive punishment if their hearing was either earlier in the day or immediately after a break. So let me say that again. If someone was standing in front of the court and a judge was going to make a ruling, it was 3 to 6 times more likely that ruling would have been favorable for the person in question. If the ruling was being done early in the morning, like first thing of the day, or immediately after a break, like a lunch break, than for those that were tried or tested later in the day. As a matter of fact, it went like— the British study said that it went from like a 65% chance of a more favorable ruling in the morning to a darn near 0% chance of favorable ruling late in the day. So if you were going to go to trial, yeah, you're right. What you want is to be one of the first people, uh, in front of the judge that day, or at least immediately after his or her lunch break. Now, why did that occur? Why did that occur? I think there's lots of variables or things to consider, but of course, you know where I'm going to go with it. I think it's decision fatigue. I think that you ask a judge to make decision after decision after decision, and their ability to make sound decisions deteriorates over time. The quality of their decisions can degrade as they make more and more of those calls. And so at the beginning of the day, they hadn't made any decisions, and the quality of their decisions were potentially of sounder, you know, mind, which led to a potentially bene— you know, maybe a benefit to the person, you know, in front of the judge at that time. They were— the judge was clearly or potentially in a better mood with higher energy versus later in the day when the tendency may have been to fall to a default or an easy decision, right? It was easy. It was, it was almost decision avoidance because you rely on default options or you just make a decision without, without contemplating it all that much. So now what do you do? Right now that we've given examples around, you know, decision fatigue in the real world, and we talked about the factors that contribute to decision fatigue, what do you do to mitigate decision fatigue? You have got to employ strategies to, to create less chaos, to create less noise in your world so that you do not mentally fatigue to the rate or to the level that would cause you to make a bad decision. So simplifying your daily routines, focusing on the 20% that yields you 80% of the result, creating more habits, creating more automation as a direct result of doing these actions over and over again. Set up these routines for not just the actions that you're doing throughout the day, but also the decisions you have to make. Prioritize the most important choices for earlier in the day before you have to make a lot of decisions and put those that are of less significance later on in the day. Additionally, make sure you rest, make sure you take breaks, make sure you eat and specifically eat a healthy diet. Make sure you take care of yourself, right? And set yourself up for success. Go into your day with energy and break up your day throughout to create more energy or to replenish, you know, energy reserves. In a previous episode, we even talked about exercise snacking. Might be a good episode to listen to around exercise snacking because one benefit of exercise snacking is a sudden burst in energy or creation of energy because you get your body moving. So whatever you have to do to replenish mental energy and improve decision-making quality, I encourage you to do so. But also, you're human, so make sure you plan your day accordingly, with again being big decisions early in the day, lesser important, you know, decisions that are of lesser importance later in the day. So the focusing question for you: are you aware of the decision fatigue that you likely experience? Assuming so, well, what steps have you taken or can you take moving forward to combat this decision fatigue? And don't jeopardize your life, your business, your relationships, whatever it may be, because your mental energy is spent. And if you're unaware of this decision fatigue occurring, pay attention, right? Odds are you may not have heard of this concept, you may not be aware of what's going on with you physically and mentally, but now we've brought awareness to it. So where might that be occurring? What can you do to change the experiences you've had, you've had to this point? That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]