3 tips from a cognitive scientist on how to beat decision fatigue

You have probably noticed that you have times during your day when you’re locked in and feel like you’re working at your peak and other times when your mind isn’t keeping up with everything that needs to be done. Some of that may reflect your circadian cycles. If you’re a morning person, you may arrive at work in the morning raring to go, but if you’re a night person, it may take you a while to get warmed up.

A big influence on your cognitive effectiveness is fatigue that can build up over the course of the day. A lot of work on ego depletion suggests that the more difficult mental work you do in a day, the harder it can be to continue to do that work later. In some sense, your ability to control your thinking and actions is a limited resource that needs to recharge periodically.

One of the big depleters of this resource is decision fatigue. Decisions are complicated. You have to identify a set of options, weigh the possibilities, and ultimately select one. Even if the particular decision isn’t highly consequential, if you put in effort on those choices you may find that you reach a point in the day where you start choosing more arbitrarily. This fatigue can be a particular problem when you are called upon to make important decisions at work or in your personal life.

Luckily, there are a few things you can do to minimize the impact of decision fatigue.

Master the effort-accuracy tradeoff

One problem many people struggle with is that they put more effort into all kinds of tasks than is really required. We all know that the more time we spend on things, the more likely we are to create a good outcome. The trick is to try to match the amount of effort to the quality that is required.

In decision making work, that is called the effort-accuracy tradeoff. If you’re buying a new car, you should probably spend a lot of time reading reviews, test driving, getting estimates of reliability, and thinking through the ways you’ll use the car. The choice matters, because cars are expensive, and there are real consequences to choosing the wrong one. If you’re buying a candy bar, though, you don’t need to deliberate much. Even a sub-optimal candy experience is still a pretty good experience in life, so you can’t go too far wrong if you don’t pick the idea.

The problem with putting too much effort in on decisions is that you’re tapping that potentially limited resource in ways that may lead to a negative impact when you are faced with something important you need to address. Try making a few of your inconsequential decisions with less thinking. If you’re still happy with the outcomes, then you can continue to choose a less effortful path in the future.

In addition, try to build more habits. Habits are actions you take that directly associate the situation with the action. That bypasses the need to make a decision at all. When you act habitually, your behavior may become routine and predictable, but you also don’t have to engage in effortful decisions on things for which your habits would suffice.

Measure twice, cut once

When you find yourself getting depleted, give yourself leeway to defer a final decision when possible. Do some of the work associated with the choice. Start evaluating the alternatives. Begin to form a set of preferences.

Just don’t pull the trigger.

Instead, sleep on it. Put the work aside overnight and come back to the decision context when you’re fresh. Look over the work you did one more time. If you’re still happy with the preferences you formed the previous day, then move forward. But, recognize that when you see things with fresh eyes (and a fresh brain), you may notice things you didn’t see before.

One place where this becomes particularly important is when there is an aspect of the decision that requires more investigation. If you are starting to feel decision fatigue, then you may convince yourself that looking into this aspect of the choice isn’t really that important. That is your brain’s way of telling you it is tired and doesn’t want you to do the work. When you look at it again in the morning, you may be more willing to put in that extra effort, which is often important in complex choices.

Choose for a friend

One reason why decisions are effortful is that they often have important consequences for you. If you choose to engage with a particular client or to take on a specific project, then it is going to shape your work life for some time to come. Big decision points in your career can affect your happiness with your path. As a result, the decisions also take an emotional toll.

Chances are, though, you may feel much less emotionally burdened talking to a friend who is making the same decision. You might even enjoy helping a friend or colleague think through a career change or a significant business decision. Indeed, there is some research suggesting that helping other people make decisions leads to less decision fatigue than making choices for yourself.

There is no reason why you can’t take the perspective that you’re choosing for someone else when working through complex decisions of your own. Imagine that your job is to give advice to a friend going through the situation. How does that change the way you feel about the work you need to do to engage with the decision? Try that strategy when you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed by a choice you’re facing.