“Decision fatigue is a psychological phenomenon surrounding a person’s ability or capacity to make decisions. It is also called ego depletion. The theory surrounding decision fatigue is that a human’s ability to make decisions can get worse after making many decisions, as their brain will be more fatigued.” Medical News Today
While some experts do not believe in this because of the difficulty in proving its effects, this is the reality of some employees and entrepreneurs.
Making decisions either big or small from time to time gradually wears us down. Each decision we make takes our time and energy and this over time makes us feel exhausted from even making any decision.
Sometimes you get to a point that you feel so tired to even think about anything and even to the extent that making a non-business decision proves difficult.
Decision Fatigue is very different from physical fatigue. You might even be feeling so energetic physically but the willpower to make any decision is not there. At this point it is like mentally you’re exhausted, the more choices you make, the more each gets so hard to make. If you’re not careful, you might start making reckless decisions without thinking through or not doing anything at all which can cause problems for you and your business.
If you notice strings of these events happening then you need to follow the following ways to overcome decision fatigue.
Ways to Combat Decision Fatigue
1. Make Fewer Decisions
The first and best thing to do when you notice you’re having decision fatigue is to start by reducing the number of decisions you make per day because decision fatigue is caused by having to make too many decisions which strain us mentally.
There is always a way you can reduce your decisions if you can prioritize the decisions and try to make sure that you don’t have to make sure that you have fewer of decisions to make.
You can create a to-do list, make plans for the next day to be able to know what and what to do instead of having to start thinking about what you need to do every day.
You can even plan some non-business decisions before time, like knowing what you’ll eat, picking your child in school, setting up automatic bill payment or even picking out the clothes you’ll wear the next day so when it’s time you don’t have to worry about all those things again.
2. Delegate Some Decisions
One of the things that wear out a lot of employers is the desire to do everything by themselves, you have people around you so you can all share tasks.
When you find out you’re getting fatigued due to decisions then look for those you trust who can make some decisions for you without you bothering about things like that.
If you have the budget you can even hire a personal assistant who would help you figure out some things without having to think about them.
If there are obligations you know you can delegate then delegate to those you trust not people you would have to always monitor but people you trust solely to handle them. This helps you get a whole lot of things out of your plate and you can have a clearer mind to make important decisions.
3. Make Important Decisions in the Morning
It has been found out that times of the day have a way of impacting our decisions. For example, there are some decisions that would prove difficult to make in the afternoon.
You need to find out the best time of the day that you’re most comfortable with, some people prefer early mornings while some prefer nights but most times in the morning when there are fewer distractions and your body is rested, it is quite convenient for you to make some very cautious and meticulous decisions.
As the day goes on when you’re working with a lot of things to attend to, it gets hard for you to focus as you would have in the morning and while you’ve been exhausted by the work of the day, the night might be for you to just rest and be refreshed.
You just need to find what time works for you and when you do so, your decision making gets easier.
4. Set Deadlines
Decision Fatigue can occur when you’re nearing a project. Toward the end of a project, there’s maybe last-minute decisions to make and these can wear you out if you don’t have it properly planned.
By spacing out your decisions and setting deadlines, you would have set in motion a mechanism that would help you against last-minute decisions. If there are things you know you might want to take time, then it’s better you set deadlines for it, so you know what to do at what deadline. This also helps you to avoid rushing and delivering projects that are not up to standard.
5. Simplify your Life
It is possible that after you have had an exhausting day, the next thing you might want to do is just eat junk or just do something not beneficial to your health. You need to start living a healthy life based on healthy choices.
If you have to plan towards this, then you do so. Don’t exchange your health and wellbeing for anything because if you do you’re gradually driving yourself towards total exhaustion. You need to be wise about it. You must be ready to only make healthy decisions for yourself.
There are other ways you can overcome and combat your decision fatigue. You can do more research and find out what works for you but you must not assume everything would work out itself. You need to be conscious about everything.
You can also check out the updated business tips page for amazing business tips and if you are also thinking of starting a business you can check out the business ideas page for business ideas in agriculture, trading and so on.
