Ever have a day that when you show up to work you are firing on all cylinders and by the end of the day, you feel depleted and worn out? The number of decisions – big AND small – have a cumulative effect where too many decisions in a short period of time leave you unable to be an effective decision maker. This is called decision making fatigue and it can have devastating effects on your decision making as a leader.
Decision fatigue causes a deterioration in the quality of the decisions that we can make in a short period of time. We begin the day with carefully weighing decisions coming our way. As a result of decision making meetings or a revolving door of problems that are brought your way can leave that last decision as impulsive and not carefully considered.
The amount of choices that we have in combination at home and work can be overwhelming. Here’s how to cope as a leader with decision making fatigue.
What’s the impact as a leader with decision making fatigue?
Quality of Decisions
Think about the quality of the decisions you make at the beginning of the day – versus the end of the day. What if the big impact decision comes at the end of the day when there is a sudden crisis that requires an immediate decision? There’s a real risk that you are not going to carefully weigh the decision and manage all risks before you arrive at a decision.
When your brain becomes tired, it will start to look for short cuts to making the decision, and you may over rely on bias and previous decision making that may seem like, but really isn’t, the same thing.
Read here about how to identify and avoid decision making traps that are common in business. It’s easier to avoid making bad decisions if you are familiar of the biases you can fall prey to.
We start each day off with a certain level of capacity for decision making. Think of this capacity as a tank of gas, it gets depleted after each use. Some decisions require more or less, but they all take something.
We start taking from that tank as soon as we wake up in the morning and decide what to bring for lunch, what to wear, if we have to pack anything extra for children to bring to school, etc… It is cumulative, decision making is not exclusive to what happens in your office.
Decision Paralysis
You may also experience the inability to make a decision, called decision paralysis, when you need to make a decision the most. This can have a crippling effect your your ability as a leader to work during a crisis.
The sneaky part of decision making fatigue is that you are not necessarily aware of being mentally drained. It can creep in to every part of your day, not just at work.
You may find it more frustrating to deal with a problem employee, adding cookies to your shopping cart when on a diet, or scrolling endlessly through your streaming service choices – ultimately deciding to turn off the television rather than choose any of the thousands of choices.
When we have used up the tank of gas: you either can no longer make decisions or you make reckless or impulsive decisions.
How to limit and manage as a leader with decision making fatigue.
Break up the pattern
As mentioned before, you may not be aware that the gas tank is depleting fast.
An effective strategy for breaking up fatigue was created by Japanese transit workers to increase safety. Called shisa kanko, it is the movement of pointing-and-calling to signs, platforms, meters, to force the transit workers to pay attention to what is happening around them.
To help with your decision making fatigue break up your day in to chunks that force you to get up and about. Vary tasks up where you can. If you have different portfolios, work tasks related to one, and then switch over to the next. It can help with a refresh.
Plan your day where you can
As a leader, you typically have some control over your day and how it is organized.
I put the difficult things in the morning, and the monotonous bill paying at 3. Wondering why your department is going through toner for the printers so quickly is not nearly as mentally demanding as doing budget forecasts in the morning. But once again, decision making fatigue is cumulative. You may also be mentally fatigued when paying the bills, but there is less risk and consequence to making the wrong choice.
Automate what you can in your day
You do not need to go to the extreme that Mark Zuckerberg did when he mimicked Steve Job’s approach to wearing the same thing everyday. The purpose of this is to automate mundane decisions – so that you can focus your energy on the big decisions.
In the spirit of this reduction in choices, automate what you can:
- Pick out what you are going to wear the night before
- Pack your lunch the day before
- Meal plan on the weekend so that you know what you are going to eat for the entire week
- Take some time on Friday to plan your next week. Include priorities and milestones
- Set up recurrent reminders in your calendar to perform certain activities on those dates and times. This can be in your personal life for the gym or it can be work related
- Take time to yourself when you are not at work. This means not checking your email constantly because you may be forced to make a decision depending on what is sent to you.
- Bonus: if you are a macros wizard, set up some reports to automate tasks specific to your job.
If you scoffed at any of the above – I personally do ALMOST all of the things listed above. I am a fan of capsule wardrobes where any shirt matches any pair of pants. I did not go full Mark Zuckerberg, but I rock a lot of navy and gray.
Postpone decisions late in the day when you can
Do you get a late email or request in person to “run something by you”? If you can put it off if you are feeling wrung out – do it. Yes, there are absolutely times where you need to make a decision in the moment, but recognize true emergencies.
“Let me think about that” or “I will get back to you tomorrow with an answer” should be sentences that you are saying when you have had a very busy day where your decision making demand has been high.
Empower your team to make their own decisions
Want some of the decision making power taken off of you? Get someone else to do it. Take the time to invest in your team and mentor them to where they are empowered to make their own decisions. See the article, Creating Workflow Bottlenecks as a Middle Manager to read details on how to empower your staff.
Remember, it may not be obvious to you in the moment when you have reached your capacity for rationale decision making for the day. Create success for your decision making abilities at work by planning decisions ahead of time at home. Put off rushed decisions to later in the day, your future self will thank you.