Decision Fatigue: Don’t Let Small Things Drain Your Energy

Repeated decision-making creates physical and psychological discomfort. The more decisions a person makes, the more willpower, discipline, and self-control they use up. The process also causes mental fatigue and can sharply reduce a person’s ability to think and make decisions. Last June, Forbes published an article arguing that one of the key problems businesses would need to solve in the future was “decision fatigue” among consumers. Consumers face too many complicated choices. To buy something, they have to filter brands, assess reviews, compare prices, and then check whether another platform offers a better deal. If a shopping festival requires coupons and minimum-spend thresholds for discounts, the process becomes even more exhausting. Many people look for a while and then decide not to buy at all. Decision fatigue is not limited to shopping; it shows up throughout daily life. One U.S. study estimated that a modern person makes 35,000 decisions a day. The moment you wake up, countless choices come your way. What should you eat for breakfast? What should you wear to work? Where should you travel on vacation, and where will you get the best value for your money? By the time you have worked through this list of choices, you may already feel exhausted before setting out. More seriously, the fatigue accumulated from these small decisions affects not only those decisions themselves but also important choices in your life. This is the familiar pattern of being meticulous about small things but muddled about big ones. People may carefully compare prices and chase discounts on household items, yet decide on major matters such as buying a home or investing on impulse. Seen this way, people sometimes let a stream of fragmented, minor decisions drain their energy and distract them from what truly matters. How can we address this? The most common approach is to simplify decisions. Drop low-priority, minor choices wherever possible so they do not require much thought. For recurring decisions such as what to wear or eat, you can create a set of rules and apply them automatically. For example, prepare a few clothing options for the coming week and mix and match each day. Mark Zuckerberg’s wardrobe, for instance, reportedly contains almost only one style of T-shirt. For shopping decisions, set limits for yourself. When toilet paper, a frequently purchased item, is down to 20% of the supply, buy more whether or not there is a promotion. For a larger purchase such as furniture or an appliance, set a rule that you must decide within 15 minutes, without putting it off for even a minute. The point is not to do these small things perfectly. It is to save energy for the major things that matter. The logic is that key events really can change the course of a life. As we often say, when an opportunity comes, you need to be prepared. One key to being prepared is not getting bogged down in minor matters, so you have enough willpower left to face major challenges. In Wan Weigang’s Elite Daily course, one lesson I especially like is called “Don’t Let the Little Things in Life Defeat You.” Think of a delayed flight, a traffic jam on the way to work, or a phone that runs out of battery during a meeting. Do you believe that several small hassles like these can derail an adult’s entire day? As Voltaire put it: “It is not the mountain ahead that wears you out—it is the grain of sand in your shoe.” The bad news is that minor hassles will always exist; you cannot avoid them. The good news is that what affects your health is not the hassle itself but how you respond to it. You cannot control the hassle, but you can control your response—or at least learn to do so. For example, suppose you are on your way to handle something urgent and get stuck in traffic. If you treat the traffic jam as an objective event and recognize that worrying will not help, you can read or listen to a book instead. Then the small hassle need not affect your well-being. When facing such small matters, we can follow this behavioral rule: “The weak retaliate, the strong forgive, and the wise ignore.” Yes, the idea is to ignore. You may find that strange: how can you ignore a delayed flight, arriving late to a meeting, or a sick child? Of course, that is not what it means. We should ignore not the event itself but our emotional reaction to it. Wan Weigang offers three specific suggestions. First, observe your emotions regularly. If you notice that your fists are clenched, your face is flushed, or your heart is racing, you are tense. Remind yourself to calm down and take a few deep breaths. Second, use small everyday joys to offset minor hassles. The pleasure from something enjoyable can counter the bad feelings a small annoyance brings. These little joys are also something we can actively create in daily life. Third, an even more advanced step is to learn the idea of “separation of tasks”: do not personalize minor hassles. Understand that the troublesome event is simply an objective fact. It is not the world targeting you, and it does not mean that many people are against you. You cannot control objective events. What people can truly control is their own actions and attitudes. You cannot control the hassle, but you can control how you respond to it. Whether it is fatigue from small decisions or emotions stirred up by minor hassles, these experiences offer a reminder. In the past, when talking about life, it was easy to think of it as a grand subject determined by one major event. In reality, what affects you may be the small things you encounter all the time. A person may be brought down not by great storms but by everyday hassles. Conversely, we need not wait for one unique, major opportunity to shape ourselves; we can simply do each small thing in daily life well. #DedaoToutiao20240307