You Really Are Tired

Do you ever get tired of making decisions?

Most people do. That’s why we often take the same route to the office (unless an unusually unbearable traffic jam makes us choose otherwise). We buy the same foods and brands at the grocery store every week (unless a particularly enticing sale price draws us to try the competitor). We wear the same outfits over and over, even though our closets are overflowing.

This defaulting to the same actions eases some of our cognitive load. Can you imagine the stress of only being allowed to wear the same outfit once in a lifetime, and having to choose new clothes out of a catalogue, every single day?

This is not an uncommon phenomenon. Being tired of making decisions even has a name: Decision Fatigue.

We usually fall into the same patterns of living unless there is some kind of external or internal factor that makes us do otherwise. And sometimes that factor is as commonplace as the time of day or when we last ate.

An interesting 2011 research article on parole requests found that judges tended to make more favorable rulings in the morning than later on in the day. After a food break, the rulings also swung to being more favorable, which again decreased as more time passed. In most of these cases, a negative ruling meant no change in the parole situation. In other words, as the judges became mentally tired from making decisions, their default was to leave the status quo in place, i.e., do nothing.

The other side of the Decision Fatigue coin is what’s known as Paralysis by Analysis. We’re so overwhelmed by the many choices that we end up choosing to do nothing at all.

A story I read long ago tells of a little girl whose mother sent her to the store to buy a jar of pickles. When she arrived home empty-handed, her mother wanted to know why. “Because there were so many different kinds of pickles, I didn’t know what to buy!”

A quick internet search just informed me that there are 23 different types of pickles, truly all unique. Multiple that by only 2 different brands, and 2 different jar sizes, and we’re up to 92 options. I wouldn’t buy a jar either if this were my first pickle encounter.

It can be very stressful for me to try a new restaurant, with its new menu, full of possibilities that may taste really good . . . or really bad. If I’m with a large group, even when it’s my turn to order, I ask the server if I can order after everyone else. I need every possible second to make a decision. And even then, I usually end up ordering what my husband orders . . . so that I won’t be envious if his meal turns out to be better than mine. Unless of course my pick has bacon. I like bacon.

It turns out I’m not alone in my Decision Fatigue and Paralysis by Analysis. Popularly known as The Jam Study, this 2000 study at a higher-end grocery store found that shoppers were 10 times more likely to purchase jam from a display of 6 varieties, compared to a display of 24 varieties. The 24-variety display initially caught more attention, but that attention didn’t translate into higher sales.

While we likely can’t free ourselves entirely from this difficult coin, we can make things easier on ourselves. No doubt that life has its twists and turns and will never be wholly predictable. But waking up each day with a plan for both our personal and professional duties eases a lot of the stress. Living a low-stress life is possible if you know how to create and then carry out your plan.

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