Yesterday morning went pretty well, I got some writing finished, decided how I would approach two presentations I have to do, organised my day, and decided how I would approach various upcoming commitments. By early afternoon I could feel a bit of a dip coming and after several video conferences I was feeling pretty fuzzy. I was starting to shuffle things around a bit aimlessly and looked at my filing but couldn’t decide where to start with it.
I then went for my allowed walk. We are fortunate to have a small park and woods near us and have a route that takes about 40 minutes. By the time we got back I felt better, my brain had calmed a little and I was able to do some preparation for this morning. Fortunately, research shows that I am not unusual in noticing that my capacity to keep making decisions declines during the day.
You may have noticed that Barack Obama only wore grey or blue suits and that Mark Zuckerberg tends to wear a grey t-shirt. This is not necessarily a fashion choice; it is more about the nature of decision making.
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 decisions to make. Barrack Obama
You may also recognise that by the end of the day you’re feeling particularly tired at the moment. This is probably partly due to the intensity of continually working virtually, but it may also be due to decision fatigue. Dealing with the current crisis has pushed many of us into making more decisions, and bigger decisions, more quickly than usual. We are also making significant decisions across all areas of our lives – how best to do home schooling, how to support our colleagues, how to restructure our organisations, how to engage our governing bodies, what support funding is available and how to apply for it, and so on.
We are all experiencing the impact of decision fatigue. The concept of decision fatigue comes from psychologist R.F.Baumeister and his research found that if our mental capacity is low it has a big impact on our willpower. It’s those little moments when you’re asked, ‘what do you want for dinner,’ and your reply is ‘you choose.’ I used to wonder if this was my partner being awkward or disengaged but now realise, he had just run out of decision-making by that point in the day.
The average digital user switches tasks more than 300 times a day (RescueTime) each of these decisions eats into our decision-making energy reserves. You may already have ways of managing these reserves, if not here are a few pointers that you might find useful:
- Timing: Try and hold your meetings earlier in the day, research shows people generally make better decisions in the mornings
- Make less decisions: Try and make less decisions overall. Reduce the number of routine decisions you make to give space for the non-routine
- Rabbit holes: watch out for the ‘what if?’ rabbit hole. It’s good to weigh up alternatives but notice when they are impacting your decision making, they can lead to tangents or avoidance
- Resting: make sure you get the rest you need. This can be tricky at the moment if you’re suffering from anxiety or not sleeping well, try and recognise when your energy is higher and work with it
- Planning: plan out your day the night before so you are ready to go when your energy is higher. It’s the equivalent of Hemmingway stopping his day’s writing mid-sentence
- Beware impulse: try and avoid making impulse decisions, these often happen late in the day or the week. I was given very wise advice once – never send an important e-mail on a Friday afternoon!
- Brain breaks: take time out and step back from the noise and chaos. It needn’t be long – make a coffee, look out the window, or take a walk
- Making and managing chunk your day into ‘making’ when you’re working creatively, and ‘managing’ when you’re doing more routine work. This helps to minimise the multiplicity of decisions
- Stay on task: try and be a completer finisher and see a task through to a natural completion point. This has been a hard learnt lesson for me, but it does work. Our brains don’t naturally multitask
- Be perfect: trying to make the perfect decision is a real energy stealer. Set high standards by all means but allow for adaptability and change
The good news is that decision fatigue is a recognised phenomenon so it’s not something we are doing wrong. The above pointers probably seem like common sense, but they show there is something we can all do to manage our precious decision-making energy.
Dawn & Susan