We are faced with hundreds of decisions to make on a day-to-day basis. Right from the minute we get out of bed, we’re deciding whether we should wash our face first, or brush our teeth.
It starts with really simple decisions like these, and carries on right through the day, up to when you’re trying to decide what to eat for dinner. When you’re deciding that, it can feel like the most impossible decision to make because you have run out of mental energy to make a call.
So what’s actually happening?
Your brain is in an elevated state of alert – a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response is actiavted. You’re stressed and it feels like your environment is filled with things that require your energy that you just don’t have. You’re constantly on alert, scanning through what you need to deal with and what it’s going to require you to do.
Decision fatigue is when there’s too many things that you are dealing with and your mind and body see them all as not-so-manageable threats.
Signs that you have decision fatigue:
1. Procrastination
2. Avoidance of dealing with it completely
3. Impulsivity – making a decision or giving the answer immediately.
4. Indecision – being completely unable to answer a question or make a decision even when it’s seemingly simple.
5. Irritability and anger when having to face something you don’t want to face
What to do if you have decision fatigue:
1. Have a routine in place
I know you have heard the word routine so much lately. Instead of trying to make a routine for the whole day, make a bite-sized chunk routine for part of your day. That could either be a bedtime or morning routine. So, instead of wondering if you should work out today or not, have the days that you workout and days that you don’t. Something like that can help you really trim down the fat on the meat of what you are trying to make decisions on every day.
2. Activate your Parasympathetic Nervous System:
This is your rest and digest system. When you are experiencing decision fatigue, you are feeling threatened. There is just too much happening in your environment that is making you feel overly stressed.
We have to activate that Parasympathetic Nervous System which helps calm you down. The only way you can do that is to build in 5-10 minutes of your day when you are actually taking a long breath out and not trying to delete emails while eating, or being run by the clock.
What you’re trying to do is to give yourself a bit of a break, and if you actually do that you are allowing your body to catch up with your fast paced mind.
3. Decide on your daily priorities:
Decide on what can be dealt with today and what can be dealt with tomorrow.
Sometimes this can feed into your avoidance of making decisions so we don’t want that, but we do want you to be thinking about the top 2 or 3 things only that need to be done on that day. That will help you judge what needs to be decided on now, and what doesn’t.
Consequences of not dealing with decision fatigue:
It is so normal to feel decision fatigue from time to time. What’s important is that you realize that it’s a stepping stone to burnout and that if you don’t do anything at this point, you could deal with far more severe consequences down the line.
So if you’ve realized that you have decision fatigue, start taking action by doing one of the above. Start taking care of yourself. Put your routine in place, and make the decisions that help you today, rather than feeling overwhelmed by taking on more and more decisions each day.
