Some people complained why their brain abilities feel slower, or even stuck. Like a cellphone that is full of burdens and its performance is getting slower, human brain can experience the same way. It’s like the brain felt more and more tired from the full load.
Why did it happen? Why is our brain getting tired and feeling more and more sluggish?
One of the causes is what is known as “Decision Fatigue”. This is a term that refers to a condition when our brain or mind experiences acute fatigue because there are too many things to decide.
Decision Fatigue
Decision fatigue occurs because there are too many decisions that we have to think about and choose.
What’s surprising is decisions that tire our brains don’t have to be large-scale ones. Even small decisions that seem trivial, in fact over time can also make our brains full of burdens.
The following are examples of small decisions that can also make us experience decision fatigue:
- What are you going to eat this afternoon?
- Tomorrow what do you want to wear at the invitation?
- Where should you go home from work?
- When do I have to start doing this work?
- When should I reply to this email
- There are many choices of food, I’m confused which one to choose.
- I’m going to the office tomorrow, what should I wear?
- When should I start exercising diligently?
- Etc.
The Root Cause of Decision Fatigue
Even various small decisions like the one above, if it’s been repeated every day, it will make us experience decision fatigue and make our brain tired.
Especially if there are also various medium and large scale decisions that we also have to choose and decide, for example:
- What investment product should I buy?
- When should I start saving to buy a house?
- Do I need to change jobs?
These various decisions, both those that are small in scale and seem trivial but annoying, to various medium and large scale decisions, will make us easy to experience decision fatigue. When this condition occurs, our brains feel more and more sluggish. Because like a cell phone, the load is full, while the memory is limited.
When there are too many decisions to think about, and ultimately make us experience decision fatigue, then our brain performance becomes increasingly suboptimal.
Overcome The Decision Fatigue
Then what is the solution so that we can avoid the trap of decision fatigue? Here are three practical steps that are worth following.
Solution #1: Create Behavioral Automation
One easy solution to avoiding decision fatigue is to create “automation” in our daily behavioral choices. Examples of simple but powerful automation include: asking a catering provider to prepare a weekly lunch menu; and we just have to eat it (so every afternoon we don’t need to be confused about where to eat lunch). Or we ask people at home to prepare lunch for a whole week, and we just have to eat it when lunch arrives.
Another example of automation hack is: wearing the same clothes every day when going to the office. This is what Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama did. When asked why, their answer is good: our brain capacity is too important to think about what clothes to wear to the office every day.
Another example of automation, for example, is to auto-debit investments. With this automation, we no longer need to think about how much to save and invest every month. Because the process has been automated by the investment auto-debit feature (this feature is now provided by many big banks).
The bottom line is: create automation for the daily and weekly decisions that we need to make. With automation, our brains no longer need to think when the decision comes. We can save the burden of our minds; and there is no need to throw it away for the recurring petty things.
Solution #2: Create a Habit to Save Thoughts
Studies on neurology (the science of the brain’s nerves) show that one of the strengths of the habit is: it can significantly reduce the load of thoughts in our brains.
Why? Because when a behavior becomes a habit, our brain doesn’t need to think much anymore. Because automatically or reflexively, the behavior will be done according to habit.
For example, your habit of taking a shower in the morning and brushing your teeth. Every morning, you automatically know when to take a shower and brush your teeth. You don’t have to think long to do it, because everything has become a habit that you reflexively do.
Well, the burden on your brain will be lighter if you have a variety of good behaviors that turn into habits.
For example: a person who has a habit of exercising every morning, he no longer needs to think a lot to do it. He doesn’t need to use his brain capacity to think: when should I start exercising, for how long, what kind of exercise should I do, and so on. When a good behavior has become a habit, then small things like that don’t need to be rethought. And just at this point, the burden on our minds becomes significantly reduced.
That is the power of the power of habit. By making various positive behaviors a habit, we will be able to avoid the tiring decision fatigue trap.
Solution #3: Don’t Bother Other’s, Mind Your Own Things
Not infrequently in our daily life at the office or in our personal lives, there is so much information that disturbs our minds. Maybe this information comes from information in our chat group or from online media and social media that we see.
Often a variety of information that makes us think. Then unknowingly, we become involved in the decision making process related to the various information (eg we participate in deciding who is right, or judging which party is more wrong, etc).
Well, over time conditions like this also often make us trapped in decision fatigue. The process of getting involved in thinking about other people’s business really drains our mind’s energy and brain capacity. We seem to waste our mental energy on things that are not useful at all.
We must be able to do the three solutions above so that our brains are not getting slower and slower.
