How to deal with decision fatigue

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Matvey Kuritsyn, Product Manager at Ecwid, talked about how he copes with decision fatigue. Lifehacker publishes the article with the permission of the author.

I work as a product manager at "". Like other guys on the team, I make a lot of decisions every day: simple, like “what text to put under the button”, and complex, like “what urgent task to postpone in order to have time to make it even more urgent”. I have noticed that I often face problems caused by decision fatigue: avoidance of decisions, weak “under-made” decisions, and deterioration in productivity and well-being.

If you make decisions in your work for the success of a project, team or company, then you are probably dealing with this fatigue too.

Below I will talk about decision fatigue: about my observations, how it manifests itself, how it affects efficiency, and how to deal with it.

Decision Making - Endurance Exercise

When talking about a decision-making resource, one study is usually cited as an example. It studied the work of judges who consider early release of convicts. It turned out that judges made more positive decisions about release in the morning or immediately after lunch break (up to 65% of those released). And as time passed and the number of reviewed cases increased, the probability of a positive decision gradually decreased to 0%.

This decline is explained by fatigue from decision-making. With the build-up of sentencing fatigue, judges were more likely to make an easy decision, requiring less effort, that is, denying early release. With such a decision, the judge observes the status quo and does not take the risk of making a mistake and letting the dangerous person go free. The decision based on a balanced opinion, whether the defendant deserves freedom or not, is much more complicated.

The original work of researchers and articles on the topic call this phenomenon ego depletion, decision fatigue, or mental depletion. Most of all I like the second - decision fatigue, it sounds exquisite.

Decision making is an endurance exercise. Here, as with physical exercises, the more approaches, the less strength you have to make the next approach qualitatively. The resource of our decision-making ability is depleted and we experience fatigue. And the process of restoring a resource is similar to restoring muscle tone: you need rest (from making decisions) and replenishing calories.

It turns out that it is not necessary to decide human destinies to get tired. Even the smallest solution uses this resource and adds fatigue.

Any decision made is considered

In another study, shoppers were asked to try a new assortment of jams. On some days it was a choice of 24 flavors, on others a choice of six. The stand of 24 jam jars attracted more attention compared to the small stand of six jars. However, the decision to buy in front of a large booth was made by 3% of buyers, while buyers from the second group, who had fewer options, bought at least one can in 30% of cases.

Choosing from a large number of similar options is also a decision, and, as with other decisions, a person subconsciously avoids this work.

We make many small decisions every day:

• Take a tram or minibus?
• Make cutlets or cabbage rolls for dinner?
• T-shirts are gray and green, which one to take?
• There are eight tariff plans, which one to choose?
• There are unused shortcuts on your desktop. Let's choose which ones to delete?

They are all simple. But, if there are many solutions, fatigue will come. And it is not easy to notice its manifestations.

How decision fatigue manifests itself

Think about your workout, run, or gym class. Towards the end of your workout, as fatigue builds up, you try to expend less energy. You portray high-quality performance to lull the coach's vigilance: not doing push-ups to the end. Or skip until the coach sees: cut the corner on the next lap.

Decision fatigue is the same, only cooler.

Firstly, it is more difficult to recognize it in oneself than physical fatigue. Muscle fatigue is familiar to everyone - you don't have to be an athlete to know this feeling. Decision fatigue is more difficult: you can get very tired without even realizing that this has happened. As if the mood has slightly soured, or everything turns out worse than usual, or I want to sleep. "Avitaminosis", "did not get enough sleep", "bad day" are the usual explanations for this condition.

Secondly, in the case of decision fatigue, you often do not notice yourself that you are performing the following approach poorly. In the early release example, the judge seems to make informed decisions at the end of the working day. After all, a negative decision is also a decision. Both from the outside and to the judges themselves, it looks like the same decision at the beginning of the hearing. But in reality, the brain "cuts the corner". Denying early release is a safe and relatively easy solution. Therefore, the judge's brain resorts to it more often as it gets tired, reducing the chances of a positive decision to zero.

The brain chooses the shortest path to getting rid of the need to make a decision. The more you are tired of the decisions you have already made, the stronger this tendency is. This can be detrimental to efficiency, especially if you have to make difficult decisions, the quality of which determines the success of your work.

The consequences of decision fatigue

Here's a situation I've found myself in many times. A busy working day with a lot of planned and unplanned tasks is coming to an end, and there is another very important item on the to-do list. It requires tough decisions (maybe that's why it was delayed until the end of the day). But, left without the "fuel" for making decisions, I find myself in an unpleasant situation when it is very difficult to make a decision. What to do?

The first option is to refuse to make a decision, to postpone the task for later. The feeling is unpleasant: “Today was a terrible day. I worked all day, but I didn’t have time to do anything sensible”. And the work suffers: a delay of one day can cost a lot.

The second option is to take the task through force. Force yourself and make a decision. But resources are depleted, and a decision made in such conditions will be unacceptable. This is the same "cut corner" - a weak solution that quickly gets rid of the problem at the moment of fatigue, but, of course, affects the result sooner or later.

Example. A user reports a confusing issue when your work day comes to an end. Little information is available and the problem is difficult to replicate locally, let alone unravel the tangle and understand the root cause. Uncertainty promises difficult questions and decisions, and then decision fatigue makes itself felt. You quietly persuade yourself that the problem is not critical and the research can wait: “This, most likely, affects only one client”, “Today I cannot reproduce the problem without the help of testers”, “Surely the client screwed up himself”. The problem remains hanging in an undefined status overnight, and the next morning you are flooded with a wave of messages about the same problem from other users. You quickly find the cause and correct the situation, but the residue remains. The undecided decision made itself felt.

Tired of making decisions in product management

The product manager makes many decisions throughout the day. From "what text to write on the button" to "which project to take and which to leave for later, when the team plans five tasks of the URGENT level." These solutions may be simple, but each one adds to the fatigue. By the evening or even earlier, enough fatigue will accumulate to create problems and, in particular, weak solutions.

A weak decision in the product then forces the user to make difficult decisions.

This is how it goes. By adding a change to a product, a product manager examines how it will affect existing users. If there are many users, then the change divides them conditionally into three groups:

• one change will be pleasant,
• the second will be all the same
• the third may not like it.

What to do? The change is necessary.

• Enable everyone? Oh, this is dangerous. Some are already accustomed to the current state of affairs and will swear on Twitter.
• Enable everyone except those who don't like it? You can add another “fork” to the system, which will automatically disable the change for a group of users. But what about the new ones? How do you know which group they are in? And I don't want to add another crutch to the system.
• Or maybe just add a checkmark to the settings? Who needs it - they will turn it on, whoever does not need it - they will not.

The solution with the checkmark is simple and safe - there will be no dissatisfied. And the brain, tired of decisions, clings to the saving tick. A few of these "cut corners", and your settings page will be filled with checkboxes and drop-down lists, the purpose of which only you and a few developers remember. At best, if you have intelligently set the default settings, the user will never see this page. At worst, he will have to figure it out and strain himself, making decisions, whether to enable or disable these checkboxes.

Of course, you don't have to be tired to make such a mistake. To please everyone is a great temptation. However, if you are tired, you are more likely to unknowingly "take a corner" and pass on an uncommitted decision to the user. And this will add fatigue to him. If you have a thousand users, you multiply your fatigue by a thousand. Every product manager wants to change the world. But it’s not like that.

What to do?

Effective is not the one who makes strong-willed decisions all day, but the one who spends the ability to make decisions competently. I found for myself five tricks that help with this.

1. Avoid unnecessary decisions

I read that Mark Zuckerberg wears the same clothes every day, so as not to think about what to wear and not waste decision-making resources on it. It sounds a little extreme (I don't do it myself), but the point is clear: if you make important decisions, spend as few resources as possible on unimportant ones. In particular, it is worth giving up the choice in advance, where possible.

For example, I tend to use tools with fewer options / tweaks / gimmicks. If you just need to write a note for yourself, you should not use a powerful text editor like MS Word or a multi-tool like Evernote, which integrates with everything that is uneven. Try a regular notepad or Hackpad, for example. Don't give yourself a reason to think about the font, alignment or color of the text - it's easier when these options are not available.

2. Don't exercise willpower

Willpower uses the same resource as a difficult decision. So it's best not to use willpower unnecessarily. If you decide to drink more water and less coffee, do not give yourself an extra reason to walk past the coffee maker in order to "temper" yourself or "play with muscles." Fill a bottle with water and keep it close to you. If you break the habit of checking your mail every ten minutes, remove the bookmark from the browser or the shortcut from the desktop, instead of relying only on willpower.

3. Prioritize the task list

If there are many tasks, choosing the most important one at the moment is also a solution, and not the easiest one. I noticed that making this decision at the end of the day is very difficult. At such a moment, without realizing myself, I find a supposedly urgent task that will push aside an important one: “I have been going to read this book for a month now. Stop procrastinating. Then I open Amazon, read reviews, look for a suitable publication - and so on for half an hour. In order not to fall into this trap, it is worthwhile to prioritize tasks in advance.

I have developed this approach. In our team, development cycles (sprints) last an average of two weeks, and I tied the planning of my tasks to them. Each time at the end of a sprint, I look at the list of key tasks I need to get done and pick the most important ones. In the task scheduler (I use Doit.im) I assign myself to one a priority task for each day until the next "planning meeting". I leave one day in the middle of a sprint without a key task, knowing that due to unplanned tasks I will be behind this schedule in four days. Thus, there are 8-9 key tasks planned two weeks in advance. Every day I have one key task on my list in advance - I don't have to decide whether to do it or not. She's the most important. The rest of the tasks are secondary.

In a real working day, everything, of course, is much more complicated: if you have an interesting job, the orderly order of tasks for the day will be disrupted by noon.

But, one way or another, knowledge of the key task for today greatly helps to navigate and not to miss the really important.

4. Start a difficult task as early as possible

A difficult decision is always difficult to make, so no matter how tired you are, you will try to escape from it. It is easier to resist this in the morning, when you are not tired yet. Therefore, it is wise to plan your day with challenging tasks first on the list. At the same time, it is important to understand that viewing mail, checking unread messages in chat, responding to messages on VKontakte are also tasks. They are small and cuddly, but imperceptibly add to the fatigue.

A year ago, I structured my working day in such a way that by the time I got to an important task, fatigue was already beginning to make itself felt:

Now I try to start the day with the most important task that I have planned ahead of time. It helps a lot! In the morning, there is still a lot of energy for complex decisions, and the task is noticeably moving forward.

In fact, this is more difficult than in words: there are always more unplanned tasks than planned ones, and they do not wait for the right moment. My “key first” schema often looks like this:

But this is much better than putting off important things until the end of the day.

It is not always possible to start important things right away. To get started, just try to bring the key task of the day closer to the top of the to-do list by one or two places. For example, try not checking your mail right away, but two hours after the start of the day. Dedicate two hours to a challenging task.

5. Stop when tired

Reach for your phone to watch Instagram? Do you open your mail every ten minutes? Looking for a simple task that allows you to quickly check Done in your to-do list?

You are tired of making difficult decisions. Stop.

Go have some tea. Or get out of the office and take a walk. For example, pay a fine that has been in the glove compartment for a month now. A short break will not completely restore strength, but it will give strength to break the impasse and allow you to make a good decision. If the symptoms are severe and the breaks are no longer helping, it's time to end today.

It is important to remember that making decisions is difficult even in the morning, even on Monday and even after vacation. The brain always avoids difficult decisions. Therefore, you do not need to specifically look for the symptoms of fatigue in yourself: you will definitely find them.

Conclusion

The ability to make decisions is a finite resource. Decision fatigue forces you to make bad decisions that badly affect your product and the lives of others. To be efficient and enjoy your work, try five simple tips from this article:

• Avoid unnecessary decisions.
• Don't exercise willpower.
• Prioritize your to-do list.
• Start a challenging task as early as possible.
• Stop when tired.