Decision fatigue

Today i woke up and randomly read about decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is a definition of how our decisions during a day decline in quality. The more decisions we make the more we use our decisions “muscle” and the more tired it gets.

As i read more about it i saw similarities in what i do on a daily basis. So for instance i make a lot of decisions i my work. So i would say that sometimes i can feel the decision fatigue at the end of the day. When i then get home i will not take big decisions at home when it is a working day. A way to get less decision fatigue is to minimize the decisions one has to take. One of the examples is that a lot of people wear the same clothes every day. This is because then they do not have to take a decisions about that. Very convenient. I do the same and sometimes it has been hard to argue why to my girlfriend – but now i know why. (And yes on special occasions i should wear something else…)

Reading about decisions fatigue as a thing makes me much more aware of it. So i will try to prioritize the things i need to take a decision on before i will use my decisions muscle to take a decisions on it. As with everything there are just some decisions that are not worth getting into at all.

Sources:

• https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/17/6889.full.pdf
• Baumeister, Roy F (2003), “The Psychology of Irrationality”, in Brocas, Isabelle; Carrillo, Juan D, The Psychology of Economic Decisions: Rationality and well-being, pp. 1–15, ISBN0-19-925108-8