Red or green? Take a trip to the city or out to the country? Chicken, steak, pork or fish? Simple questions, but making them back to back to back to back can be exhausting. Harvard found that the average person makes over 30,000 decisions a day! With all those decisions to make, what are we to do?
Here’s the facts on decision fatigue
The Decision Lab describes decision fatigue as a form of mental bias that makes decisions much harder despite having options right in front of us. It can quite literally decrease our ability to make any decision! If you get to the end of the day and are frustrated with wondering where should I go to get dinner, it could be this bias coming into play!
Evan Polman and Kathleen Vohs found several studies that showed in a chain of decisions the later the decisions was made the less wise it was likely to be. They also found in a study that during standardized testing, the later a test was given the worse the final score was.
Unfortunately we can’t just make every one of the thousands of decisions first, right in the morning. In this case a solid framework can help us make less decisions, and make better choices when we need to. So, here’s our three step decision limiting process!
Decision fatigue stopper 1: Collect all the facts first
Want to prevent having to go back and make a decision multiple times? We can easily have to change a decision and go back and change a whole process losing time when new facts come to life. So before getting into a decision, make sure you have all the information you need first! Then you can make a choice and move on in confidence. If you’re not sure you have all the information you need, check out the productivity charter. Its our process for getting clarity and alignment on any task!
Decision fatigue stopper 2: Standard Decision Procedures
One of our favorite ways to deal with decision fatigue is to just stop the need to make the decision! How often do you end up with a decision you’ve made before and likely will again? When you look at the last week, how many are choices that have been made before? If you’re able, make a standard response that way you don’t have to spend the brain power! If you write them down, then others can just look up the decision without having to ask. Plus if you include a step by step process of what to do next you’ve effectively delegated!
Finally: Decision batching
Ok, so far we’ve eliminated the choices that come from new information and the ones we’ve made before with standard decisions. What do we do with those choices that are left?
This is where batching comes into play to stop decision fatigue from taking over. Take all the list of the major decisions that are left and batch them into groups. This way you have all the facts for that category and can see if any effect others. For example if you have 10 choices for project A, 10 for project B, 5 to make at home, and 5 personnel decisions split the four apart. Make all the choices for project A, then B, etc. Just don’t forget to check off the choices on your to-do list as you make the choices!
