Decision fatigue

Decision fatigue happens after someone has made decision after decision after decision. Just like a muscle getting tired after lifting weights, the brain gets tired after making lots of decisions and starts making less accurate and less beneficial decisions.

(Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit each day so he would have one less decision to make.)

Applications

• A doctor has made hundreds of treatment decisions and is mentally exhausted. For their next patient, they prescribe a common antibiotic instead of figuring out the most appropriate one.

• An employee is making many decisions about benefits their first day. They are too mentally tired to make a decision about which health insurance is the best, so they just select the first one on the list.

What it is not:

It is not mental exhaustion of your willpower – that is ego depletion. And being presented with too many choices at once is called choice overload.