Mastering the Mind: Overcoming Decision Fatigue and Strengthening Willpower

What time of day do you feel most comfortable making important decisions? What time of day is it easiest for you to fight against bad habits or lean into good habits you’re trying to form? For most of us, it’s mostly early in our day, regardless of when we start our day, and there’s a reason for that. It’s called Decision Fatigue. It’s essentially universal, and once you understand it, you can work with your energy levels and rely less on willpower.

So much of what we ascribe to willpower or the lack of it actually reflects how much stress or fatigue our minds and emotions have undergone during a period of time. I wake pretty early, I get up at about 4:30 most days, excited to get up and create or learn something. For a long time I would start out dealing with email, because I had a backlog of reading material that I’ve been trying to clear out. I’d get finished with that just at time to go to work. Since I work from home, a quick shower is all I need to get ready for the day, so fifteen minutes is my get-ready time. All well and good…except that I’m also trying to learn a new technology for my job, start a business, publish a book, and improve my photography skills. Well, working from home, I have some extra time after work to do that, right? Wrong. After dealing with people all day (people are the worst!), working in that technology I’m trying to learn, answering questions about what I’m working on and identifying who has the next action, and meetings, meetings, meetings (I used to have one meeting a week, and now I have about ten throughout the week), I don’t have the attention span to sit and watch a video or read a book to try to learn something. I’m mentally exhausted when I finish work, and that’s with a job that I love! If you don’t have that luxury, you’re probably even more drained than I am at the end of the day, and that’s the wrong condition to be in if you want to learn something well, or if you have important decisions to make.

I’m going to define Decision Fatigue and talk about some of the psychological mechanisms behind it. Then I’ll talk a little about willpower and willpower depletion (yup, that’s a thing), and factors that influence our willpower levels. Next I’ll talk about the relationship between decision fatigue and willpower. I’ll wind it up with some strategies to combat decision fatigue and strengthen willpower.

Understanding Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue is the decreasing quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making. It’s essentially the mental exhaustion that arises from having to make too many choices, leading to poorer quality decisions or the avoidance of making decisions altogether. It’s similar to the manifestation physical fatigue, and, thinking about it like that, you may be able to recognize times when you’ve experienced decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is influenced by several psychological mechanisms that affect how we make decisions over time. I’ll list several and explain them.

1. Resource depletion: This is the most widely-recognized theory. It states that making each decision depletes a finite store of mental energy. This model also suggests that willpower is a limited resource that is depleted by being overused in a short period, which leads to decision fatigue.
2. Consideration of opportunity cost: If you do one thing, there’s something else you aren’t able to do. For example, if sleep, you can’t use that same time for exercise. If you exercise, you can’t use that same time for sleep. There’s a trade-off, and that trade-off is called an opportunity cost. Every time we make a decision, our brain has to consider the opportunity cost, and that gets more taxing with each decision. Too much of this and it can lead to simpler decision making (which may or may not be appropriate to the situation) or putting it off completely.
3. Ego depletion: the idea that self-control and decision-making draw from the same supply of mental resources, and that supply is limited. As a result, it’s not only making decisions that deplete the resources, it’s also having to rely on self-control or willpower.
4. Emotional investment: most decisions involve being emotionally invested in the outcome, and this can add to the drain that decisions place on our resources. The more emotionally invested we are in the choices we’re called on to make, the more likely we are to experience decision fatigue.
5. Analysis paralysis: I’m sure you’ve heard of this, it’s becoming so overwhelmed that making any decision at all is simply impossible. Overthinking consumes a significant amount of mental energy.
6. Fear of deciding wrongly: this can not only cause a quicker onset of decision fatigue, it can also make it impossible to decide anything at all.
7. Cognitive load: If the decision is more complex, or if you’re trying to make a decision while you’re having to concentrate on one or more additional tasks, you will experience decision fatigue and a reduced capacity with which to process information.

Exploring Willpower

We use the word willpower a lot, without really stating what it is, so let’s do that now: Willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. It’s the inner strength that enables self-control and discipline, guiding us to make decisions that align with our long-term objectives, even when they conflict with immediate desires.

We often use willpower and self-control interchangeably, and they are related. They’re not synonymous, however. Self-control is the mechanism through which we exercise our willpower. Willpower is the thinking, self-control is the action. However, because they are not the same, you won’t always experience the same level of influence over each. You may be physically fatigued but mentally and emotionally rested, and vice versa, and the combination will have an out-of-balance effect on willpower and self-control.

Willpower and decision fatigue are both affected by mental energy and cognitive load. The more you’re asking your mind to do that doesn’t have anything to do with willpower and decision-making, the less resources you’ll have at your disposal for the activities that do require those things. Your physical wellbeing also plays a part, and this shouldn’t come as any surprise. Physical rest, nutrition, and overall health have a direct on both decision fatigue and willpower, as does stress level, and this is true for physical, emotional, and mental stress.

There are some differences, though. Let’s remember that decision fatigue comes primarily from the process of making decisions, especially decisions that are pretty complex. Willpower is more related to resisting temptations, delaying gratification, and maintaining discipline, and these actions may or may not be tied to decisions. Also, because decision fatigue sets in after a series of decisions, we can see it as a more immediate depletion of resources. Willpower, on the other hand, can be influenced by a broader temporal scope, such as habits, beliefs, and motivations.

The Connection Between Decision Fatigue and Willpower

The first thing to understand when we start looking at the connection between the two is that they both draw from the same pool of mental resources, and they both place a cognitive load on the brain. We can think of willpower as a series of decisions, as well, because we’re trying to trade a short-term benefit for a longer-term one, and that requires making a choice, which is a decision. As a result, making more decisions can result in poorer-quality decisions as we go down the decision-making line. If you’ve ever wondered why, after an incredibly stressful day, you reach for a bag of chips rather than make a salad, that’s why. It can also be cyclical throughout the day or over a period of time in which you don’t rest and recover well. As willpower relies on the same pool of resources as decision-making, having the willpower to make choices that benefit us better may not be there, so we’ll make the choice that gets us through the time period, which may limit the other possibilities available to us for other activities. The good news is that when we get good rest and good nutrition, we get a reset of the resources. While we can’t avoid having to make decisions, we can give our bodies and brains a better pool of resources by getting enough sleep, eating well, and participating in the things that help us recover mental energy – and those are yours to pick and enjoy.

Strategies to Combat Decision Fatigue

You’re not going to avoid making decisions. Even if you hand over all decisions to someone else, choosing to comply is a decision. Besides, there are some decisions you simply don’t want someone else making for you, like whether or not to date someone. It would be easier, sometimes, to not have to make some choices, but that’s not necessarily better. However, there are some things you can do to minimize the amount of decision fatigue you experience.

1. Simplify the choices. List the options you’re considering, and throw out the ones that are not viable or acceptable. By doing that, you’re narrowing the scope of things you actually have to consider. For example, I use the same brand of shampoo and conditioner all the time, except when I change it up to give my hair a break. But within that brand, I can choose the product that my hair needs at the time. I don’t have to choose between the entire row of hair products, which is overwhelming. I am choosing only between one brand’s offerings, which occupies a very small amount of shelf space.
2. Establish routines and habits. I can’t express strongly enough how valuable this is, and it’s why Steve Jobs always wore the same outfit. I don’t always want to wear the same outfit, but I don’t want a valuable resource like decision-making capacity to be negatively affected by something so simple. When I was going to work outside of my house every day, I made my wardrobe choices on Saturday after my laundry was finished. I grouped the pieces together and hung them in the closet in one certain place. For my skincare, I have a morning kit and an evening kit, and I have the products in separate compartments in a little tote that I can stow under the sink during the day. Instead of searching in a drawer for what I “want” to use, I just pull the products out of the appropriate compartment. This is also why I’ve changed up my routine so that I’m doing my studying and writing in the morning rather than after work. Taking a promotion at work has involved me in significantly more meetings than I attended before the promotion, and the workload itself involves more decisions and mental effort. Spending time learning is stimulating for me, so it feeds my work efforts, but the work efforts deplete my mental resources to the point that I simply cannot absorb educational information after work.
3. Use decision-making frameworks. When I was getting started implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, (and doing so means you’re going to be making a big mess to get going with it, but it’s worth it if you get through it), I followed his “two-minute rule.” If a task takes two minutes or less to do, do it now, don’t schedule it or put it off for later. The Marie Kando method of “Does this item spark joy” or the timeframe question of “have I worn this in the past year” are also decision-making frameworks. I had a free day last week and it was tempting to go shopping. However, I exercised a framework of “If I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go when I bring it home, I won’t buy it.” Since I’m in the midst of a project of getting rid of stuff, there’s nothing I want to deal with finding space for. No shopping.
4. Prioritize decisions. Most decisions don’t have to be made on the spot. Yes, some do, and you can’t help that, but there are a lot of decisions that we can delay until we’re fresher. If you know you have a big decision, or one that is complex with a lot of moving parts to consider, you might want to write it out and deal with it first thing tomorrow morning. And I mean, First Thing.
5. Delegate what doesn’t need to be done by you. You can let another family member choose where to go on a weekend getaway. You can let your secretary decide who to use for the catered lunch. Some things are not your top priority, and they don’t deserve your top-level brain activity.
6. Set a deadline. I will decide by Saturday which of the remaining available cabins to rent for our vacation. I’ve already eliminated the ones that don’t have all the amenities we require, so all we’ll be left with will be the ones that will work, and some will have been rented when I come back to make a decision. Once you’ve eliminated all the unacceptable choices, you can keep narrowing it down until you reach a point at which it really doesn’t matter what you pick, they’ll all work.
7. Know what “good enough” is, and when you get there, go with it. Not everything has to be perfect. It really doesn’t. I promise you, there are some things that won’t rock the world if there’s a misplaced comma. This is where you lead with the understanding that your mental health has value and you’re feeding it.
8. I can’t overstate this – take care of yourself! Hustle Culture has us believing that less sleep is a badge of honor, that rushing from thing to thing and busyness is something we wear on our sleeve proudly. It’s a lie, all of it. You serve best from your own well of abundance, and you replenish that well of abundance with rest, good nutrition, and enjoyable activities.

I’m not a creature of habit to the extent that I refuse to change something that simply doesn’t work for me. I have implemented the Getting Things Done methodology, and it helps me – well, get things done. It’s not the only system I use for doing things, I have different systems that I use for different situations. When I look at my life and it’s all gone messy, it’s usually because I’m not working my systems. My systems work when I work my systems.

My systems don’t work for everyone. What’s your technique for making decisions or dealing with mental exhaustion? Drop a comment below and let’s talk through it.