Make as few decisions as possible. Learn meta rules that will help you eliminate or automate decision making based on their impact.

A couple of years ago I realised that I suffer from Decision Making Fatigue. These are my notes about what I learned from it and how I am trying to address it currently.

Everybody suffers from Decision Making Fatigue

Yes everybody suffers from decision making fatigue. Some might accept and some might not. But what I have realised after some initial discussion I have heard all people accept that decision making takes up a lot of mental space and it leads to fatigue.

Other than decisions you make for fun and kick (An example would be decisions you make in video games or games in general), most of the decisions take a toll on you. If you think otherwise do let me know in comments I would like to know more about your perspective.

High level classification of Decisions

I broadly classify the decisions into personal and professional. Decision making fatigue is common both these scenarios. But the setup of these two scenarios are very different. That is the reason I separate them.

In professional life you work with people who are working towards a common goal. Though you can point out that there is competition in professional life, if you are working with a good set of people on a common goal, competition will be replaced with cooperation. If that is not the case it might be a good idea to change your job. Also since there is a hiring process which acts as a filter you can be assured that there is some sort of similarity and incentive alignment as well.

In personal life it may not be the case. In family there are multiple people at different phases of their life and hence the expectations are also difficult. To a certain extent this is offset by the fact there are close bonds in a family. The fact that there is going to be a long term commitment to your family members when compared to your colleagues makes things better. But you also have to be aware of the fact that there are emotions attached and the drama associated can be worse if the family members are not emotionally mature.

You can ignore a colleague and complete a day at office. Try ignoring your spouse and see how the day fares :P

Thumb Rules to reduce Decision Making Fatigue

Once I realised that I suffer from Decision Making Fatigue, I tried to be aware about this and tried to observe the following : are most of my decisions personal or professional?, amount of fatigue caused during decision making, what contributes to it, does worrying about it or getting more data help, how many times do I reconsider my decisions once I have made up my mind etc

Based on these I made some thumb rules.

Reduce the number of decisions

At first it appears to us that we are left with no option and we have to make those decisions. But just by being conscious we can reduce the number of decisions we need to make. Most of the decisions we make are repetitive but we spend our energy making the same decision over and over again. Having some simple ground rules or directions can make sure that we don’t waste energy on repetitive stuff.

Anxiety is not always proportional to the impact

This might seem counter intuitive. But this seems to be true. At-least for me. For example let us say I have to make two decisions A and B. If the decision A is wrong I loose 50k and if decision B is wrong I loose 100k.

For me in both the cases the anxiety is same. For you it may not be the same but at-least I am sure that the anxiety of B is not twice the anxiety of A. I am using money as an example but you get the gist.

Most of the decisions won’t even have impact

We worry a lot. At the time of making a decision we feel that it will have a lot of impact. But once the moment passes we realise that the decision didn’t have much of an impact. What are the decisions that won’t have an impact might vary from person to person. But I am sure everyone spends a lot of time deliberating such decisions which ideally shouldn’t consume your mind space or energy.

Whenever you feel that you are about to decide something important make a note of it. Revisit that same after a day, a week, a month and a year. You will see that as the time progresses the importance we attach to that decision reduces drastically. Observe yourself and very soon you can identify a group of repeating decisions that wont make an impact.

Decide in advance

Spend some time thinking and analysing these decisions. Come out with some meta rules that will help you identify such decisions and makes it easier for you to decide. Most of these decisions doesn’t need to be made in real time. Just simulate the situations and decide what your decisions should be if you face those situations.

• To do or not to do — If something takes less than 5 mins just do it now instead of doing it later.
• To work or not to work — Don’t check notifications after office hours. If you check notifications immediately reply that “I will get back to you on this tomorrow” and mark it as TODO. You have reminder option on slack as well.
• Spending — If something is less than 500 Rs don’t bargain or think whether to buy it or not.

Meta Rules for Decision Making

You may not be able to pre-decide for all the scenarios. In such scenarios having a set of meta rules will help you speeden your decision when you want to make them. Here are the meta rules that I use these days. Some of them were part of the article above but am still adding it here for the sake of completion.

• Reduce the number of decisions you need to make.
• Whether the decision is small or huge the anxiety seems to be same. (Though this sounds weird, this happens a lot with me)
• Most of the decisions won’t even have impact.
• Ask how much impact it will have?
  • If the answer is not much you might as well roll the dice and decide.
  • If it does impact ask “Does it have long term impact?”. If the answer is no, again roll the dice.
  • If it does have long term affect “Does it affect me or those close to me?”
    • If the answer is “Those close to me”, I let them decide and help them in the process.
    • If the answer is me, I ask myself does speaking to other people and doing research help me make better decision. If the answer is a resounding yes then I spend time on it.
    • If the answer is no, then I pick one that seems best fit to me and set a timeline.

The timeline can be say 6 months, year or two. Until this set time, I don’t try other options. I try to make the picked option work.

No decision is good or bad. Just what you do with it once you make the decision.

Part of meta rules