081 Combatting Decision Fatigue

Chris DuBois 0:00 On today's episode seven ways to combat decision fatigue or your leader trying to get more from your business and life meter. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. Alright, so first, what is decision fatigue?

So, decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions that are made by someone just over a given period of time, right. So the more decisions you need to make on a given day, harder becomes to make good decisions. So it's incredibly dangerous for leaders, because we're faced with tons of decisions throughout any given day. And it's not just, you know, work related decisions, it's choosing what outfit to wear, what to have for lunch, right?

Every single one of these decisions starts to stack and makes it harder to make subsequent decisions. And if you're not careful, decision, fatigue is going to sneak up on you. And it's going to hinder your your capacity to make great decisions. So what we want to do is find all of the ways to kind of mitigate those issues, like combating decision fatigue.

So here's some ways that you can actually stay ahead of this and not become a problem number one, self control for self regulation. It willpower is finite, the more you have to rely on self control during the day, the more likely you are to make poor decisions. So instead, you self regulation, right planning ahead, so that you don't need to make decisions. So an example if you're dieting, don't leave sweets out.

Here, you'll have to actively tell yourself no every time you pass them, so instead, get rid of them. Now you don't have to make that decision. Another example, set your calendar for the week on Sunday, then stick to it, then you don't need to question what you should work on for any given day. And number two, simplify and reduce choices where possible.

Too many options can lead to overload. And so we try to limit choices in areas that aren't that important. Steve Jobs, right famous for wearing the same outfit daily, presidents will have their outfits chosen for them. Some people even choose to eat the same meals every day.

And it's simple, but it reduces the number of decisions you're making. And so that frees up your brain power. So the more things you can turn into habits, the better. Number three, take breaks.

After making important decisions, you can recharge some of that willpower by just taking deliberate breaks, right? How you recharge is going to differ depending on who you are. So just go explore, see what works best for you. But I can with a high level of certainty guarantee that scrolling on social media is probably not the fix, right?

You're wrecking your dopamine system and inadvertently, making it harder to make decisions in the future. To try things go for a walk, try using a different part of your brain. So if you're making a lot of logical decisions, go like play musical instrument for a bit like do something with a creative side, draw some pictures, color, something that actually causes your brain to get relief from the side that you need to be working on. So that you can then recharge it and get to work.

Number four batch similar decisions together. So making back to back decisions, unrelated things is a lot easier than jumping around on different to like different topics and stuff. So it comes down to like switching costs, right, your brain has to like change how its thinking entirely to move on to a new decision. And that gets into a lot of what we're going to cover in some of these future episodes with how you acclimate and collect all this information.

And as you're trying to increase that speed to informed, right, you have to keep jumping to different decisions. You have to keep restarting this process. So find the decisions that stack and then try to make as many of those together as you can. Blocking your calendar is a great way to focus on connected tasks and projects.

So you don't have to have that. That switching decks in number five, recognize when you're fatigued, it sounds simple and common sensical but like often avoided by people. So develop your self awareness skills to the point where you can accurately identify those moments when you're just mentally exhausted and you find yourself struggling to make good rational choices. In these instances, do not push yourself further.

Right. No matter how mentally strong you think you are, take a break. Give yourself the permission to pause to breathe to rest. Then when you're in a better mental state, you can revisit the decision.

That is how you are going to end up making much better decisions. And number six priority Important decisions. So focus your energy on those big important decisions and put them earlier in your day. If, if you know you're like flux in your day for when you have the most energy time, your decisions for that, I use an app called sleep cycle to track my my sleep, and it just did a monitor all those little numbers get a little sleep diary.

But with it, I use the rise app. And that'll actually show when my energy will dip throughout the day, and when I'm gonna have my peaks. And so I can time things for when I'm in my peak where like, 3pm, I know I'm in a better mood, I'm thinking more clearly. So let me put some hard decisions there rather than right after lunch, where tends to dip.

Right, President Obama made a point that if a problem reached his desk, it was an important one for the United States, right, there were a lot of leaders below him that should have solved problems before they got to him. So if you have other ways, as similarly do that within your business, right? Empower your team to make other decisions so that you're not making all of them. If it gets to you, it's because you have to be the one to make that decision.

And finally, number seven, consult others whose judgment you trust. So when we start talking collaboration, as part of the decision making, like skills, we'll get into this a lot more. But if you know the people who can help you with specific decisions, then bring them in, especially quicker, like when you're starting to get fatigued. And when you just when, you know, bring them in, get their feedback, get their input, because they're going to help you much faster so that you're also freeing up some of that those mental calories to work on other decisions that you need to lean into.

So like ultimately, if you don't need to be the one making the decision handed off, right, but if it requires your brainpower, then keep a limited number of people around who you can rely on to to go to and get it done. Okay, that was seven different ways that you can combat decision fatigue, you have self control or self regulation, you simplify and reduce choices where possible. Take breaks after making important decisions, batch similar decisions together, recognize when you're fatigued, prioritize important decisions and consult others whose judgment you trust.

Making decisions is incredibly important. Again, for every leader, that is probably the one skill that is underdeveloped. And so many leaders out there today. If you can get this, it will give you a competitive edge.

But just because you have that skill doesn't mean you're always going to make the best decisions. Combating decision fatigue is one of the ways that you can get around that so try these out. Let me know if anything's helpful, and we will see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to today's episode.

If you want to leave a review, awesome, but I would recommend you head over to LinkedIn. Connect with me. Join the conversation there. You find my profile in the show notes and I look forward to connecting with you Transcribed by https://otter.