So perhaps the easiest way to make sure we can face a hard decision with our full attention is to simply make fewer decisions. And, as we’ve seen, letting the small choices pile up sets us up for failure. The more responsibility we take on in our lives, the more decisions we’re forced to make. Cut down on the number of decisions you have to make each day (e.g., wear the same clothes every day) Those 16-hour days going back and forth on a tough decision might be doing more harm than good. It’s important to be self-aware of what state of mind you’re in before tackling a hard choice. It’s why after debating for a few minutes, you agree to your friend’s bad restaurant choice just to get the decision-making process over. We begin to lose the ability to weigh the outcomes of our choices and make dubious decisions. The judges were dramatically more likely to free prisoners earlier in the day (before the judges had made any big decisions) or right after lunch (when they were rested and replenished) compared to the afternoon (when they've already made multiple big decisions).ĭecision fatigue hits us when we’ve depleted our ego. When Jonathan Levav of Stanford and Shai Danziger of Ben-Gurion University studied Israeli judges' decisions to grant parole to prisoners, a strange pattern emerged. However, even though decisions fatigue is inevitable, there are ways to make sure you’re not letting it affect your difficult choice. Especially when it comes to the kinds of decisions we’re talking about here, which require a massive amount of cognitive grit to weigh the pros and cons. So it’s no wonder that at a certain point we reach what’s called decision fatigue-where the mental energy required to weigh the tradeoffs of our decision become too much for us to handle. That’s 70 distinct moments of wading through options and committing to a certain choice. Understand the Effects of Decision FatigueĪ recent study from Columbia University decision researcher Sheena Lyengar found that on average, Americans make 70 conscious decisions a day. Perhaps legendary Daoist philosopher Laozi put this best when he asked:ĭo you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? 2. Make sure when it comes to a decision that you give yourself the space to think between stimulus and response and break your mind out of the destructiveness of "reaction mode. There’s a reason your mother told you to take a few deep breaths before you get angry. Simply starting to think in longer periods will help settle your brain and shift from reaction to strategy mode. What’s going to happen? And then what might happen? And then? Sorry to sound like your mother or father here, but: Before jumping to a conclusion, consider the consequences of your decisions. Evolutionarily speaking, it was important for us to be able to react to something new in our environment (you didn’t want to sit back and think about whether or not that lion really wants to eat you), but in the modern workplace we need to be able to calm those thoughts. Unfortunately, most of us are conditioned to respond as quickly as possible.įrom the moment our alarm rings, we’re in reaction mode-acting based on the stimulus around us rather than casting our eyes to the future. They think about the future most of the time," rather than thinking only of the next few hours or even minutes: The most successful people, Banfield found, "are intensely future-oriented. Banfield discovered was that ‘time perspective’ was the determining factor of whether or not a family moved from a lower socioeconomic class to a higher one-that is, whether they improved their socioeconomic situation or not. Edward Banfield, professor emeritus of government at Harvard University, who spent 50 years studying upward economic mobility. The most important? Think about the long-term consequences of your decision. In his book Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field, author Brian Tracy presents ten different ways of thinking that enable better decision making. We may respect those able to fling themselves into a hard problem and make a quick choice with seemingly little thought, but making a meaningful decision needs to be done with care for the long-term effects.
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