Decision Fatigue
When You No Longer Know What Happens Next
In productivity circles, where hot-button words seem to multiply like rabbits, the term that’s been catching my attention the most these days is decision fatigue.
We all know the feeling. You have a stressful couple of work weeks, someone close to you lands in the hospital, you’re in the middle of a reno job where the contractor constantly comes back to you needing changes for one reason or another, and somewhere in middle of everything you’re supposed to plan and book your summer vacation. Day after day, you keep moving forward, answering questions at your job, producing work, asking questions of your loved one’s medical team, choosing paint colors, reading hotel reviews. Decision after decision until, after a few steady weeks of demanding days and nights, you finally take a break and go out to dinner, only to stare at the menu without the slightest ability to choose an entrée. Your brain has gone on strike. No more decision making for you.
Human beings spend their days making decisions, both large and small. In times of stress or increased responsibilities, those decisions can multiply. An American Medical Association article on the combined effects of mental and emotional fatigue quotes Dr. Lisa MacLean, a psychiatrist and chief wellness officer at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan: “…by the time the average person goes to bed, they’ve made over 35,000 decisions and all of those decisions take time and energy, and certainly can deplete us.”
This past week, I’ve been apartment hunting, with all the accompanying decisions. How much am I willing to spend? One bedroom or two? What amenities are my must-haves? Am I willing to pay extra for parking? Do I want something modern or a place with a bit of charm? And don’t get me started on the many and varied styles of application forms. By the time I headed out for drinks with a friend Monday night, my response to “The wine place or the cocktail place?” was a blank look, followed by “Please don’t make me pick.” (Turns out the wine place is closed on Mondays, so we ended up with an easy out.)
My housing adventures are just one in a long line of recent circumstances demanding I make many more decisions than usual on a daily basis. I can relate to all the textbook symptoms of decision fatigue: Procrastination, Impulsivity, Avoidance, and Indecision. I could probably toss burnout in there, as well, but one buzzy term at a time.
The traditional advice on how to treat these symptoms is pretty intuitive.
First, limit your decisions by setting routines and eliminating choices where you can. Think of Steve Jobs with his jeans-and-a-black-top uniform, always eating oatmeal with fruit and coffee for breakfast, doing laundry every Saturday, or running at 6:45 each morning. Put a few things on autopilot and then you reserve some bandwidth for the next set of choices that come your way.
Next, make big decisions early in the day, when you’re still fresh. Once a decision is made, move on. Don’t waste time and more energy going back and forth on your choices.
Finally, where possible, delegate tasks and decisions to people you trust so you can relax knowing they will get done without your repeated input.
This all seems like great advice, and I’m sure it works some of the time and/or for some of the people. But what happens when your routines have been blown up by circumstance? When life adds a bunch of new tasks to your plate and everything feels equally important? How about people who have side gigs that feel as much a priority as their day jobs?
Specifically, how does decision fatigue affect writers, who are struggling to juggle day jobs and family responsibilities and the crazy world at large while still finding time to be creative? Writing requires more than the time to sit down in front of your blank page. Storytelling represents a series of decisions. Character development, setting, plot, dialogue—everything asks the writer to think about the scenario and make decisions about what happens next.
We talk a lot about writers’ block as not knowing what comes next, as having made a wrong turn a few scenes back, or needing to dig deeper into your characters. But what it gets down to is making decisions. You don’t yet know the answer to the question of the page: what happens next? Because it doesn’t just happen by itself; you as the writer make a choice and then write it down. The what, the how, the why, and so on. And while I’m certain there are many circumstances that underpin a writer’s “what happens next?” moment, I am equally certain that decision fatigue can play a role.
For months, I struggled to get back to writing. I wanted to bring this newsletter out more frequently, but after long days of working as an agent, of serving as a caregiver, and the dozen other things that seemed to demand my attention, I would reach the evening wrung out of every creative impulse in my body. I’d be flattened. Numb. The idea of sitting down and writing something helpful and/or entertaining felt utterly impossible. Not because I lacked the desire or motivation, but because I could not choose what to say. I had a list of newsletter ideas, but picking one felt like the most enormous ask. And so I didn’t write.
Now I write every morning at 8 am, before I do anything else of substance. I work on my next newsletter or I do morning pages or I play around with another personal project. For one hour, early in the day, I put my writing first. At 9, I put my agent hat on, and we’re off. Reading emails and queries and contracts, typing up pitches, talking to editors. Still plenty of bandwidth for all of it.
On weekends, I rotate my routine, depending what is coming up the next week. I might spend an entire day reading full manuscripts on submission, which requires focus but only two real decisions: Do I want to keep reading? Do I want to sign this? Or I might spend a morning generating more newsletter ideas, researching an article, or brainstorming plot points for a personal project. Or I’ll do notes for a client’s latest manuscript, which is definitely a high-bandwidth activity. But allowing myself to rotate these priorities gives different important tasks a chance to benefit from my most-rested brain.
Of course, these are not the only types of decisions demanding my attention, and time-sensitive events pop up to redirect me. Otherwise known as: life happens. But for things that don’t require my immediate response, I try to collect them to address at the end of the work day. I’ll jot down a running list in my planner of emails to answer, calls to make, files to send, bills to pay, etc., then take a half hour in the late afternoon to cross them all off, minimal decision-making required.
It's not a perfect system, and it is most definitely a work in progress. And I know I will have more time to work with once I clear a few more big tasks from my horizon. But I do feel like my refusal to stick to a single routine has provided my brain more recovery time between bouts of heavy lifting. No single aspect of my life gets short shrift all the time, because each gets a turn at me well rested and caffeinated. There have been far fewer mornings staring at the screen with no idea what to write next. My reading speed is creeping back up to its pre-personal chaos rate, and I’ve made a sizeable dent in the number of queries in my submissions queue. I even picked a couple of apartments and submitted applications to both of them, allowing first response to determine my winner.
I’m curious to hear if any of you feel decision fatigue weighing you down. Is this something you deal with on a regular basis, or have you experienced it in a particularly stressful phase of life? Do you have any personal hacks for managing your choices and keeping yourself fresh? Please share in the comments. I’m sure everyone can do with a few good tips.
Not much on the business front this week. As indicated above, I’m working my way through all the queries and submissions that hit my box during my recent open period and from a couple of past events. I’ll be participating in the Online Minnesota Writing Workshop on September 6th, so check that out if you’re interested.
As always, thank you so much for joining me here and taking the time to read. I look forward to your comments, so feel free to chime in below about your experiences with decision fatigue or just your bookish thoughts. Wishing you all some excellent time for reading and writing this week. Until the next one!🥰
“No single aspect of my life gets short shrift all the time, because each gets a turn at me well rested and caffeinated.”
This is such a clever strategy. I also like rotating timing for different tasks, and I think this is a big reason I do it.