Decision Fatigue at Work: Is it a Myth?

Decision fatigue looks like this: You’re staring at your Netflix screen, so overwhelmed by your plethora of options that you spend your evening watching trailers. You’re stumped by the 10 different shampoo brands ogling back at you in the supermarket aisle. You’re so exhausted by work you find yourself Googling “What should I have for dinner?”

According to experts, you make around 35,000 decisions a day. And as it turns out, it’s pretty exhausting stuff. Ignoring the seven or so hours we sleep, that works out to be 2,000 decisions an hour. Before you head into the office, you decide to: snooze your alarm, sleep some more, roll out of bed, make a coffee, eat (or skip) breakfast and get ready for work.

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Signs of decision fatigue at work

As the day moves into our working lives, the list gets longer. Our decision fatigue eventually crawls in like an afternoon nap, hazing over our rationale and skewing our judgement. Why? Because the more decisions we make, the harder decisions become.

Studies show that in American football games, quarterbacks are known for making poor decisions towards the end of the match and in business, CFOs are prone to mistakes by the time the evening rolls in.

But this mental burnout has some serious implications. A study which looked at 1,100 court hearings in the US found that the most influential factor in whether prisoners received parole wasn’t the length of their sentence, their crime or their background. It was the time of their hearing.

Judges granted prisoners parole 70% of the time if their hearing was in the morning, but just 10% of the time if their hearing was later in the day.

On this basis, C-suite executives and directors running businesses should be wary of how their judgement is so easily skewed by the time of day – especially when it comes to strategic decisions.

How to avoid decision fatigue

Each decision makes the next one harder, so our brains look for easy ways out.

• The first easy way out is to act impulsively, rather than flexing and eventually fatiguing our decision muscle. Your downfall here is the recklessness of doing, then thinking.
• The second easy way out is to avoid choices altogether. Your downfall here is that it’s near impossible to do so.

But there are little wins. Picture Steve Jobs in anything other than his black turtleneck, jeans and New Balance sneakers. Kind of hard, right?

Under the premise of decision fatigue, Jobs knew that outfit choices were both menial and a waste of his decision resource. By kitting out his wardrobe with a staple look, he simplified his morning and saved his decision-making power for things that truly mattered.

The same goes for Obama. In an interview with Vanity Fair, he explained: “You’ll see I wear only grey or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

Other so-called hacks include eating the same meal plan every week or making important decisions first thing in the morning whilst your resources are at their prime. And of course, making sure you’re well-rested and well-fed.

For any business leader, the schedule of your day needs far more strategy than you may have thought. While we’re not suggesting you throw away all your clothes and adopt a uniform, making small changes and being aware of how suggestable your decision-making acumen is can go a long way.

Writing inThe New York Times, John Tierney says: “The truly wise don’t restructure the company at 4pm. They don’t make major commitments during the cocktail hour. And if a decision must be made late in the day, they know not to do it on an empty stomach.”

How decision fatigue wears down your willpower

Not only does decision fatigue make you careless, it makes you care less. People are more likely to binge on junk food after they’ve made a ton of decisions. That’s why all the sweets are found at the checkout counter after you’ve deliberated choice after choice in the aisles.

This comes under the umbrella term of ‘ego depletion’, which says the more willpower we use-up resisting things or deciding things, the less willpower we have. Our mental energy for exercising self-control is finite, so every time we exercise self-control, the less we have left.

Studies have found that when people resisted the temptation to binge on M&M’s, they had less will power to resist other treats.

Likewise, when people warded off the impulse to cry at a sad movie, they were quicker to give up on lab experiments testing self-discipline.

Is decision fatigue real? Or is decision fatigue a myth?

While there’s plenty to point towards decision fatigue’s realness, there’s also a big corner of the internet that questions whether decision fatigue is a myth.

One string of criticism notes that ego depletion and decision fatigue were only observed in people who believed willpower was a limited resource. When people believed they had an infinite supply of willpower, they didn’t show signs of ego depletion.

It might be a perfect example of how belief can drive behaviour. Thinking we’re exhausted makes us feel worse, and telling our colleagues we had a great weekend makes us feel good.

Maybe it’s a popular school of thought because it gives us a way out – a neat excuse that justifies a 4pm slump or a mistake made late in the working day. But in the same way we wouldn’t run out of happiness or sadness, maybe willpower comes and goes depending on our environments, moods and mentalities.

Rather than trying to hack our willpower resource, we should accept that our minds are distractible, human errors are normal and our modern-day lives are inundated by choices, instant gratification and targeted advertising.

Or, as Nir Eyal writes in The Harvard Business Review, “If mental energy is more like an emotion than fuel in a tank, we can… ride out bad feelings. Similarly, when we need to perform a difficult task, it’s more productive and healthful to believe a lack of motivation is temporary than to tell ourselves we’re spent and need a break (and ice cream).”

One way to alleviate decision stress at work

When it comes to work-related decisions like finding a new office, you can find yourself quickly exhausted by your options. For example, deciding between serviced office space and managed office space, deciding which area to base your business in and deciding how much space you actually need for your team.

Whether you feel affected by decision fatigue or not, we’re here to take away as much stress as possible. The Knight Frank Flexible Office Solutions team will take all the hassle out of your office search, advise you on your best options and fit your industry and culture to the right space. No requirement is too big or too niche, and it comes at no cost to you.