This post was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The last few weeks have been filled with lots of decisions to make that felt seemingly impossible and exhausting. You can probably imagine most of them were COVID-related. As the time got close to this holiday, I felt some shame while thinking about what this day represents.
Here I am, trying to decide whether to do a rapid or a PCR, whether to call out of work or not for yet another cancelled school day, while Martin Luther King Jr. made one decision after another to put his life in harm’s way for the greater good. So thank you, Dr. King for reminding me of what is truly important.
Decision fatigue is a term that has been around for a while. It was first derived from the Strength Model of Self-Control posited by Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Muraven, and Tice in 1998. An article in the Journal of Health Psychology describes it as ” the impaired ability to make decisions and control behavior as a consequence of repeated acts of decision-making.” There have been plenty of experiments looking at this phenomenon but the goal of today’s post is to inspire you and not to teach a psychology class.
Decision fatigue essentially means that the more decisions you make throughout the day, the more fatigued you become. You are then less likely to make good choices when faced with more decisions. This may not matter if the decision is whether to put on black or blue pants but it does matter when deciding what to eat for dinner.
The pandemic brought a whole new layer of decision fatigue. We no longer are making me regular day-to-day decisions but now, we have to make decisions based on recommendations that change weekly. They also don’t just affect our health and well-being but those of many others.
So what can we do? Are we doomed? Should we only make important decisions during the first few hours of our day? I wish that was possible but seems unlikely to be a reasonable option for most of us.
Here are a few tips that help me manage my decision fatigue. I hope they can help you too.
- Plan your week. I have lots of posts on different kinds of planning, so please go back and read them if you need help. I like to do my major planning Sunday nights after the kids go to bed. I am relaxed, work week hasn’t started, and it helps me clear my brain. It is very hard to decide to make a healthy dinner when you come home from work at 5 pm, when all you want is something fast and easy! You can plan anything and everything. I make a daily schedule hour by hour for the whole week, a meal calendar, plan my clothes for work, kids’ snacks, etc. The less decisions you have to make when you are rushing and feeling tired throughout your week, the better!
- Be kind to yourself. This also comes up all the time in my posts. Remind yourself, especially in these COVID times, that you are making the best decision you can at that moment. Maybe you booked a flight for a much needed vacation or finally let your child go to a birthday party and then someone got sick. Maybe you went and had a lunch date with a friend and she called you the next day to tell you she had COVID. Now, you are kicking yourself for choosing to do any of those things. The truth is that there is no way to know what the future holds and you have to make whatever choice seems most reasonable for you and your family at that time. There is always going to be something!
- Ask for help. This can including assigning chores to everyone in the family, asking your partner to pitch in, or even outsourcing anything you can. Friday nights is our restaurant/take out night but sometimes it’s too hard for me to choose where to go since I am very tired of making lots of decisions throughout the week. I asked my husband to take over that task and I am so glad I did!
- Stay connected. It has been very helpful for me to stay connected with friends and family. Pre-and post-pandemic connections have always been key for my mental sanity. I find it helpful to have friends, family, and colleagues to be able to commiserate with, to talk to, and to keep each other going.
- Keep moving. Life goes on. Decisions have to be made. I love Dr. King’s quote above. If you are struggling with making decisions and feel stuck, just make ANY decision. Make a decision that is consistent with who you are, but also remember tip #2! It is is ok if the decision you made wasn’t the best or if it didn’t work out. Think of it as a lesson for your next decision.
I would love to hear any tips you have to combat decision fatigue. I took some time to read about Martin Luther King, Jr. on MLK Day and it was so inspiring. I imagined how many decisions he had to make that not only affected him but millions of people. It made me feel like I could really make decisions about anything and I would be ok.
References
Pignatiello GA, Martin RJ, Hickman RL Jr. Decision fatigue: A conceptual analysis. J Health Psychol. 2020;25(1):123-135. doi:10.1177/1359105318763510