Too Many Choices, Not Enough Energy: How to Beat Decision Fatigue

Do you ever feel mentally drained before the day is even over?

Leadership is continuous decision-making, big and small, strategic and simple, urgent and long-term. From setting priorities to approving budgets, leading people and conversations, and even deciding what to eat for lunch, every choice you make drains your mental resources.

This exhaustion is known as decision fatigue, and it is a real and researched phenomenon. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder it becomes to make good ones. Your brain’s ability to weigh options, consider risks, and stay rational declines. By the end of the day, you are more likely to take shortcuts, give in to your ingrained habits that may not even be working for you or avoid decisions altogether.

So how do you protect your mental energy and consistently make better decisions?

Why Decision-Making Drains Your Willpower

Research in psychology and neuroscience shows that our ability to make good decisions is like a muscle, it gets tired with use.

Roy Baumeister, a leading researcher in willpower, tells us that self-control and decision-making draw from the same mental resource. Every choice you make, whether big or small, depletes this cognitive energy bucket. As it empties, your ability to think critically, resist impulses, and make sound judgments declines.

Signs of your decision fatigue may include:

• Procrastination: Putting off decisions because your brain is tired or looking for mindless tasks, 
• Analysis paralysis: where we delay due to too many choices or the inability to decide,
• Impulsivity: Making rash choices just to get them over with,
• Avoidance: Letting others decide for you or ignoring decisions altogether,
• Mental exhaustion: Feeling foggy or overwhelmed even with simple tasks.

When we are facing decision fatigue we often default to safe, familiar choices (what has worked before), even when we know they are not the best ones. We start saying yes to everything just to avoid the effort of evaluating alternatives or risking conflict.

So how do you reduce decision fatigue and make better choices?

The key to overcoming decision fatigue is reducing the number of unnecessary decisions you make and preserving your mental energy for the decisions that really count. 

Think through all of the decisions you made today or yesterday, how many of those really needed to be made by you?    If you are making all of the decisions, here’s how to reduce your decision making load.

Automate the small stuff.  Especially with AI at our fingertips, there’s no excuse not to do this.  

Another strategy to save your brainpower for what matters is by creating routines for low-stakes choices.

• Eat the same breakfast, set a standard meeting-free time, or plan your outfit the night before. Many high-level leaders do this to free up cognitive space.  Simplify decision you make every day.
• Have a set process for common choices (e.g., only checking emails at two set times per day, or defaulting to a "no" unless something meets clear criteria).  Give yourself some decision-making rules.

Steve Jobs famously wore the same black turtleneck every day to reduce trivial decisions. Barack Obama streamlined his wardrobe, saying, “I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”  Simplify where you can.

Your brain is freshest in the morning, where you can schedule your most important thinking and decision making for early in the day.  Another tip is to try and handle strategic planning in one session rather than spread throughout the week.

Do I need to be doing this?

If the answer is no, but you are still doing it, you need to think about how you can empower others by delegating more (and trust your team).

Many of us struggle with delegation because we feel the need to be across everything. But if you do not delegate decisions, you will spend your energy on things that your team could handle.  

Clearly define what decisions your team can own without your approval and how you can push decision making down.  Instead of answering every minor question, start asking: “What do you think?”
Most team members will have the answers.  Let them take responsibility and focus your attention where it is needed most.

If you have the intention to delegate but you are still not actually doing it, or to the extend you can, reflect on why.  Chances are you have a deeply held belief, that needs to be challenged, that is holding you back. 

What happens when you have a lot of decisions where there is not clear boundaries or parameters?  Create your own decision-making guard rails.  Setting up frameworks and principles can make choices easier.  Rather than deciding everything from scratch, create a process.  Reflect on where you have completed a similar decision or task previously, what made it work?  How can you apply this as a rule or guiding principle going forward?  An example can be a checklist that reduces the mental load of evaluating options (AI can help you here).

Have options you can strike out right away?  Reduce unnecessary comparisons by narrowing down to a few key options before making a final call.

Have you heard of the 2-minute rule?  If a decision takes less than two minutes, make it immediately. Don’t let small choices pile up.

Leadership is not about making all of the decisions.  Its about making fewer, smarter ones.  Reflect on how you spend your time, are you holding back on or avoiding decisions?  Its time to get clear on the decisions that really matter.

Decision fatigue is not just about exhaustion—it directly impacts how effectively you lead. The best leaders preserve their mental energy for the choices that truly matter and design their days to avoid unnecessary decision drain.

So ask yourself: Are you making too many low-value decisions? And what could you change to protect your brain for the ones that count?