Types of Decisions

Are you wasting your energy on inconsequential decisions? Decision fatigue is now a well-known concept, but I had never figured out how to apply it to everyday life. A lot of people rely on me to make decisions, so I’m not going to stop making decisions anytime soon. I found the concept interesting, but not applicable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about decisions lately and how we make them. Building on the concept of tacit decisions I wrote about earlier this week, I’ve developed the pictured framework to think about decisions.

On one axis we have the degree of attention given to a decision, from mindful to unconscious. On the other axis, we have the impact of the decisions. The decisions that lead to decision fatigue live on the mindful side of the chart, so a way to reduce the energy spent making decisions is to reduce the number of low-impact, informal, decisions made by turning them into rules and habit.

For example, one decision that always annoyed me was figuring out what to eat for dinner. I was tired from work, I was hungry (especially if I needed to work late) and wanted food as painlessly as possible. Cooking is usually a meditative experience, using a different part of the brain from what I exercise at work, can be a great opportunity to listen to a podcast, so I never minded it much. But picking what to make from what is available in the fridge always felt like solving a linear program constrained by available food and trying to optimize a balance of enjoyment, health, effort, spoilage… I realize that may be a “me”-thing, but it is a decision I was more than glad to get rid off with meal delivery, turning it into an automatic decision I don’t need to think about anymore.

Do you have story about how you automated a part of your routine to stop thinking about it so frequently?