## What is decision fatigue? Decision fatigue is felt when our ability to take rational, meaningful and important decisions start to decrease. This is something that everybody can experience, and everyday. When we're too tired to even be able to choose our meal because of a rich day of decisions and trade offs, we're experiencing decision fatigue. This is caused by a number of decision. We can say that decision quality decrease while decision quantity increase. So by reducing the amount of trade offs we're making every day, as trivial as it is, we're preventing this fatigue. Decisions can be as simple as choosing your outfit the morning, having to choose between restaurant A or B for the noon or as tough as defining crucial strategy for your company. Of course, not every trade offs are providing the same value. Defining this crucial strategy for your company that need a big amount of decision is better worth than choosing which t-shirt color you should've wear today. The goal, in order to reduce this fatigue, is to make the least trivial decision possible. Decision fatigue is something I'm familiar with since +10 years now. I made a lot of life choice early in my life that still helps me to take important decisions and keep intact willpower for my prefered activities. Here's my policies: - **I have a strict clothes policy**: I'm wearing only grey jeans, white shoes, black, white and grey shades t-shirt, that don't show any brands. Thus I don't have to think about color association or what to wear the morning, my clothes look all the same so it don't matter taking the first piece that fall in my hands. It also saves a lot of time during shopping. I'm so conditioned about this that I virtualy don't see any other clothes than these and this significantly reduce the available choices in the shops to make it easier to choose. - **I'm vegetarian**. Not just because of fatigue decision, but it plays a big role. Just like the clothes, it significantly lower the options I have when I'm eating outside. As restaurants have an average of 2 or 3 vegetarian dishes to their menu, contrary to the plethoral choices of meat based dishes, I don't have to hesitate a lot to choose. Same thing at the supermarket. - **I don't drink alcoohol and avoid most sugar drinks**. This is for the same reasons of being vegetarian. This isn't a choice only because of the vegetarianism too. When you go to the bar, it reduce your choices by 90%. Easier to choose, cheaper, and you keep your rationality. It always ends in orange juice or Perrier. - **I'm [adopting a lot of new micro habits](Adopting%20new%20habits.md)**. When everything become automatic and you start to don't think anymore of doing something, you managed to reduce the choices you have to make to do certain actions. - **I have a minimalist way of life**. I'm not spending more than 250€/month, and this is mostly in transports, phone and internet subscriptions. Having to make the least purchases possible benefit in both way: it reduce your decision fatigue, and by reducing decision fatigue you also make less compulsive purchases. When it comes to buying things, I'm always resting on my lazy nature. I'm postponning the decision to the next day until I abandon or forget it. (Or need it so bad that I buy it because it's necessary). ## References - [Decision fatigue: how a burden of choices leads to irrational trade-offs - Ness Labs](https://nesslabs.com/decision-fatigue)