Overcoming decision fatigue
Before it overcomes you
Happy Friday, Intentionalists!
The human brain has a cognitive limit as to how many good decisions it can make in a day. If the limit is exhausted, decision making becomes impulsive, irrational or just plain overwhelming. This is referred to as ‘decision fatigue’ and often shows up as procrastination or low energy.
The fatigue has to do with our brain chemistry. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and hormone that plays a key role in pleasure, motivation, and reward-seeking behaviour. When we make decisions we’re pleased with, dopamine is released and we feel good. According to Psychology Today, we make about 2,000 decisions per hour—or one decision every two seconds of our waking day. But our brain wasn’t designed for modern life, where the number of choices is becoming never-ending and every swipe, scroll, and click on social media chips away at our mental reserves.
Decision fatigue has become a mental and physical health crisis.
When under pressure, our brain activates the body’s stress response, releasing the hormone cortisol. While short bursts of cortisol help us to stay alert and respond quickly to a crisis, chronic stress from too much decision-making keeps cortisol levels elevated, impairing our brain’s cognitive control and complex thinking. Over time, this stress begins to affect memory formation, emotional regulation, our quality of sleep and our body’s capacity for growth and repair.
Decision fatigue can be particularly severe in caregivers and parents of young children, who must make decisions for themselves and also for those who rely on them for their wellbeing. The ‘mental load’ refers to all the practical aspects of running a household, including planning, scheduling, remembering details, and anticipating needs. It falls disproportionately on women, whether they’re working full-time outside the home or not.
Decision fatigue is a vicious cycle that will not only rob you of your mental and physical health but also your dreams. It hampers the willpower and self-discipline needed to master a subject and the energy required to achieve a much-longed-for goal.
But we’re not going to let that happen, Intentionalists! Today, we’re going to look at ways to nab decision fatigue before it nabs you.
Usually, in our newsletter, we give you some prompts and then the strategies. Today, we’re doing things in reverse. We will give you some important strategies to avoid decision fatigue and then let you decide on one or two to implement starting immediately.
So grab your journal and a pen, and let’s get started!
STRATEGIES
1. Make important decisions and work on projects that require deep thinking and creativity early in the day.
Leave the later part of the day for more automatic activities like folding the washing, answering emails or telephone messages, or enjoying social media. Brendan Burchard has a great motto: Done by one. By that, he means do your most important work by 1 pm each day.*
*Night owls and shift workers, adapt to your schedule.
2. Replace your phone with an alarm clock so that you aren’t tempted to use up your brain capacity with doom scrolling first thing in the morning.
Use that time when your brain is at its optimum to meditate, visualise, exercise or make a start on a dream or goal.
3. Do as much preparation as you can the night before, when your brain power is low, so that you aren’t making as many decisions first thing in the morning.
Choose your clothes for the next day, pack your bag, organise any papers you’ll need for an appointment, decide on your travel route, pack your gym bag, etc.
4. Make less decisions.
Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and even fashion editors like Anna Wintour and Diana Vreeland were famous for having a ‘work uniform’ to avoid having to think about what to wear every day. Clear unnecessary clutter and simplify your life.
5. Don’t do things for others that they can do for themselves.
It’s one thing to help a very small child or a forgetful elderly person find their shoes, quite another to do it for an adult partner.
6. Be intentional about what you are going to focus on each day and what you want for your own life.
Write out priorities for each day and stick to those. Don’t get caught up pondering celebrity scandals or office gossip, they create brain drains that serve no useful purpose.
7. Plan breaks between tasks to give your brain a chance to rest and recoup.
Sometimes it’s more efficient to do things in sprints with rests in between (look up the Pomodoro method) than it is to work as if you were running a marathon with no breaks.
8. Get into bed an hour before you intend to go to sleep and use that time to unwind completely.
Put all screens aside and read a book, do some knitting, journal or snuggle up with your pet or partner instead.
PROMPTS
Has learning about decision fatigue made you view how you spend your time differently?
Some typical symptoms of decision fatigue include difficulty concentrating, forgetfulness, brain fog, feelings of overwhelm and anxiety, and procrastination. While these symptoms can result from many different causes, do you think decision fatigue could possibly be contributing to yours?
Pick one or two strategies from the list above that you would like to start implementing right away. Then write a paragraph or two about what it will look like to put them into practice. Include all your senses – sight, smell, feel, sound, touch.
For example: My alarm clock rings brightly. I turn it off and sit up, taking a long sip from the glass of water I left on my bedside table before I went to sleep. I get out of bed and stretch, then immediately put on the exercise clothes I laid out the night before. They feel cool and stretchy as I put them on. The zipper of my jacket makes a fun snapping sound as I close it …
Don’t be tempted to skip the visualisation part of this exercise. If you do it, you are much more likely to implement the changes you want, as you are training your brain to automatically do the activity without having to rely on willpower or make too many decisions.
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FEEL GOOD AFFIRMATIONS
I always make my priorities a priority.
I control my attention and decide what to focus on.
I allow others to do the things they’re capable of doing for themselves.
(Pick an affirmation and say or write it slowly ten times. And if you want to repeat all the affirmations, that’s wonderful too!)
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KELLY’S SILLY BIT
Old words we should bring back
I have been nosying about finding some dusty old unused words for you this week, and I have collected some beauties. I have so many of these, so if you want more, please let us know in the comments.
Hurdle-durkle
Comes from 19th-century Scotland
It means to lie in bed or lounge about when one should be up and about.
Who doesn’t love a cheeky hurkle-durkle?
Giggle Water
20s slang from the prohibition
A jolly and playful way to describe alcohol. In the 1920s, during the prohibition of alcohol, code words were used for hooch or booze.
I’m no Poirot, but I reckon I would have sniffed that particular puzzle out.
Fribbler
You can use it to describe someone who behaves frivolously. Who has a lack of good sense, or of any purpose.
Do you know anyone who dabbles in a bit of fribble? Also, I can hear this being a biting insult. “You no-good fribbler!” That’ll learn ‘em.
Gruttling
An old English word
It’s a mix of two words (grunt/rattling) and it means an unexplainable, strange noise.
“I say, what’s that gruttling?” Would this be onomatopoeia*? Grunt is.
*Onomatopoeia is a word that mimics the sound it describes, like BLAM or SMASH … or other similar words you see in Batman comics.
Woofits
Popular in the early 20th century
It’s the brilliant slang word for a hangover. You’re feeling under the weather the next morning after a night of drinking.
Oft. Nothing like a nasty woofit to put you off your giggle water for a bit. Am I right?
Crapulous
The first known use of crapulous was circa 1540
It means you're feeling sick from either eating or drinking too much. Or both.
So you can be crapulous AND have the woofits. I feel like crapulous is really the word for Christmas day.
Slugabed
One of William Shakespeare’s finest
It’s similar to Hurdle-durkle. It means someone who stays in bed when they should be up and about. Ok, it’s not similar, it’s the same thing.
In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's nurse calls Juliet a slugabed. That’s just before she realises that Juliet is actually … dead. You’d think about that forever, wouldn’t you? Saying that. Yikes.
Concupiscible
The earliest known use is in the Middle English period, 1150—1500
It means to long for or to desire.
I like it. Imagine someone you’re into saying this to you. It would be great, after you asked what it meant.
Last but CERTAINLY not least, I give you my favourite.
Earsgang
An old English word
It means anus, arse or the lower opening of the digestive tract. The literal translation is arse-exit. Fun fact, the ears in earsgang is where we probbaly got the word ‘arse’ from. Brilliant.
Ye-olde word for arsehole. I have no notes. I love it.
Which ones do you think you'll bring back? Do you have any favourites?
Be an intentionalist.
Belinda & Kelly XX
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