For some of us, a typical day at work requires us to make hundreds of decisions, which can become mentally draining. This constant decision-making can leave you feeling irritable, overwhelmed or unable to make the right call, even on small matters. If you’re feeling this, you’re not alone. This unique type of mental exhaustion even has its own name: it’s called decision fatigue.
Knowing how to combat decision fatigue can help you become more productive, eliminate stress and avoid burnout. In this article, we’ll look at the impacts of decision fatigue, help you identify if you’re suffering from it and explain what you can do to beat decision fatigue for good using a solution called deferred decision making (and no, we don’t mean leaving all of your important decisions until the last minute!).
What is the Impact of Decision Fatigue?
From making poor decisions to not being able to decide at all, decision fatigue comes with a host of negative consequences. Whether you’re a doctor working in a busy hospital or a manager in a corporate environment, the mental strain of making major decisions repeatedly throughout the day can affect your well-being.
Each choice that needs to be made uses cognitive resources. As a person’s mental energy wanes as the day goes on, the use of mental resources leads to increased fatigue. This reduces productivity and takes a toll on their mental health. Increased stress can also accelerate the onset of decision fatigue. Common signs of decision fatigue include difficulty concentrating, procrastination, poor impulse control, avoidance, indecision and burnout.
Addressing decision fatigue leads to improved productivity and helps guard against feelings of overwhelm and stress that can lead to burnout. It’s not just in an individual’s best interests to address the issue; it can benefit entire organisations.
What is Deferred Decision-Making?
Energy is a finite resource. By deferring those low-stakes decisions until a later time, you can reduce your cognitive load. However, this doesn’t mean you should avoid making decisions altogether.
Deferred decision making relies on strategic time management, where you create mental space for recovery and allow yourself to tackle the most important tasks when your energy is at its highest. Instead of making every decision immediately, leave less urgent or low-consequence selections until the decision really matters.
Think of your mind like a battery. Each decision you make depletes the battery a little. With deferred decision-making, you are essentially plugging your battery in to recharge so that it doesn’t deplete completely.
How Deferred Decision-Making Supports Energy Management
Deferred decision-making can help reduce the mental load and free up brain space so that you’re not making impulsive decisions or the wrong choice. By using alternative methods to manage minor decisions (see techniques below), you have more time to focus on those more complex decisions that require more mental energy.
However, it is important to set specific times or task management procedures to deal with these less critical decisions. Having clear plans or deadlines will prevent unresolved deferred decisions from becoming another mental burden.
Practical Strategies for Applying Deferred Decision-Making at Work
Here are some simple tips to help you beat decision fatigue with deferred decision making.
Automate your decisions
The first step to saving up some of your mental energy for when you need it is to streamline some of those personal decisions that you make each day. Create a work menu so you don’t have to decide what to have for lunch. Or adopt a work ‘uniform’ even if you are expected to wear smart casual clothes. Although these decisions are minor, making them in advance helps to save energy for more critical choices.
The second way to automate some of those less important decisions is to use technology tools to reduce the number of decisions you have to make. For example, set up automatic email responses for frequently received emails like enquiries, letting people know that you will call them back during the hours you’ve set aside for this task.
Setting a daily routine can also help you automate tasks, saving you time and effort in deciding what to do when.
Re-jig your to-do list
Prioritising your decisions can help avoid decision fatigue. Use a decision triage (urgent vs important vs deferrable) or the ‘delegate, defer, delete’ method to postpone or eliminate some of your daily decisions. If you have trouble delegating decisions to your trusted colleagues, set up a decision-making framework for everyone to follow.
Use energy management
While you’re re-jigging your to-do list, think about using energy management techniques to ensure you’re making the most critical decisions of the day during your peak energy times. Studies show that most people have just 90-120 minute periods of high focus at a time. By leaving mundane tasks for times when you have less energy, you can avoid using your most productive hours of the day for those tasks that don’t require as much mental energy.
Embrace self-care
Self-care practices like taking short breaks throughout the day help reduce decision fatigue because they give you the chance to ‘refill your cup’. Our capacity to make big decisions is depleted as the number of choices increases, so take time out to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Go for a walk, try deep breathing or other mindfulness practices like meditation. Improving self-awareness can boost sleep quality and reduce stress, helping you make more important decisions at work.
Make a decision and stick to it
Once you’ve made a decision, don’t let perfectionism make you second-guess yourself. Be confident that you made the right choice with the information available to you. And secondly, set a time limit to make decisions and stick to it.
Examples of Deferred Decision-Making in the Workplace
If a decision isn’t time sensitive, it can likely be safely deferred. Here are a few ways to get started.
- Don’t manage emails at once. Block out specific times throughout the day to check your emails rather than breaking your focus to check each one as it arrives in your inbox.
- Wait for more information. Planning projects around assumptions is a waste of time. Use rough outlines until more specific information, like budgets, is available to you. By holding off, you can change course as required.
- Defer your final decision. Preparing for a meeting? Making decisions beforehand might mean second-guessing yourself once you can gather more information or data, so wait until the meeting itself to make the call.
- Make daily life easy. Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck, blue Levi’s jeans and New Balance sneakers to work each day for more than a decade. Barack Obama famously wore only grey or blue suits. Creating a work uniform helped them reduce decision fatigue, and it can help you, too.
Overcoming Common Challenges
Deferred decision-making is a balancing act. It’s not about procrastination or risking delays. If you don’t have enough context to make a decision, or it’s not time sensitive, it’s possible you could defer these decisions to free up mental energy to deal with more pressing or critical issues. However, you need to keep track of these unresolved deferred decisions and don’t leave them until it’s too late to act without consequences.
How to Implement this Important Energy Management Technique
Having too many decisions to make each day can cause us to become less productive. It can lead to impulsive choices, feelings of overwhelm and mental exhaustion.
However, by using the deferred decision-making strategies we’ve talked about above, you can beat decision fatigue.
Learn how to make thoughtful decisions and boost your productivity by enrolling in an Energy Management course with Priority Management. We’ll teach you how, using evidence-based strategies that you can easily apply. Visit our website for more information or call us today on 1300 139 126.