Good strategies to avoid bad decisions

Tired people tend to stick to the status quo and, in many cases, while concentrated on keeping things as they are, they tend to indulge in unhealthy and unproductive habits. At first, the connection between tiredness and resistance to change seemed straightforward. However, what hit me soon after was the idea that when we are tired, not only we are more reluctant to change, but we are also less prone to even making a good decision (either to change or to maintain the status quo).

In a study conducted over more than a thousand of judicial rulings in the US, psychologists found that rather than being affected by the kind of crime committed, the % of favorable judgements (in any given day) depended on when the cases were discussed (https://jamesclear.com/willpower-decision-fatigue#:~:text=What%20the%20researchers%20found%20was,ruling%20steadily%20dropped%20to%20zero). No matter the law that was broken, parole judges were more biased to give a favorable ruling either early in the morning or right after a lunch break. The explanation of this phenomenon resides in the analogy between our mind and any muscle in our body. When we wake up (or after a break), our minds are restored and we are (usually) full of energy, ready to embark in another adventurous day (or part of it). While we move through the day, we take an incredible amount of decisions that could span from:

·      choosing if exercising and having a healthy breakfast vs sleeping 30 minutes more and eating a chocolate muffin on our way to the office

to

·      launching that exciting new project vs holding it on for a couple more weeks.

As the time passes by, the number of decisions taken (or to be taken) increases, and sooner or later, we find ourselves too tired to say “Yes”, opting for an easier, more conservative - also in terms of energy - “No”. And this opens to the very first and easy strategy we could apply to improve our decision-making process. Evaluate the most important things first and then move through your day. Corollary to the first strategy: try to avoid scheduling important meetings late in the morning or late in the evening. Leave those moments for the ordinary part of your day – if you are lucky to have one. Corollary number two: if you want to have better chances to receive a fair “verdict”, discuss what’s important early in the morning: your “jury” will be much more inclined to listen.

Successful people tend to routinise their lives and the former US President Obama was no exception. In several interviews he affirmed that he did not want to waste time and energy on non-vital decisions, such us what to wear or when to go to the gym (https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2012/sep/17/barack-obama-secret-weapon-routine). The idea behind the "routine strategy" is that any choice (vital or not) requires effort and consumes energy. If we could start to save power since early in the morning, we will be better equipped when critical decisions will require the best version of ourselves. Doing triathlons, I have learned how crucial it is to cut all the unnecessary decisions. I start to prepare my gears one week before the race, so I don’t have to waste time and energy one or two days before the event. In those last two days, I concentrate on the recovery and on freeing my mind. I do have a checklist for all my gears, and it’s been the same since the first race. For the competition, I set a series of alarms on my watch to remind me when to drink and eat. This very simple trick eliminates the fear of not completing the race for missing a fueling step and reduces the overall level of stress: my mind can stay focused on the racetrack, forgetting about energy bars and liquids. Similar strategies work just as well in the rest of my life. Hence, strategy number two is to convert decisions in part of your daily routine: don’t waste energy on things that can simply end up on a checklist.

Finally, here is what I do to reduce the risk of taking bad decisions (I can only contain what I cannot eliminate :-)). When possible, I tend to collect all the information I can on the subject and then I take the final decision when I am calm and in a quiet room (or under the water of the local swimming pool), preferably early in the morning or during the weekend. For all the decisions that require immediate feedback, I do my best to expand my “energy tank” doing sport and meditation, while creating a routine for all the choices that can be taken once (i.e. diet) and kept for a quite long period of time. My routine is a library of ex decisions that are not consuming energy anymore.

And what about you? How do you avoid decision fatigue? Do you have a strategy? If you don't have one yet, I hope this article helped you finding or defining one that fits your needs.