The New York Times recently published an excellent article entitled
Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue? In this article they explored the fact that not all decisions we make are equally as good and these decisions can vary widely depending on how alert or fatigued we are.
The article starts with an exploration of a piece of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In this research the authors looked at what decisions judges made regarding parole for a series of prisoners. They found that the time of day had a profound impact on whether the judges granted parole or not. 8.50am was a good time to appear before a judge, 4.25pm was a bad time.
"The mental work of ruling on case after case, whatever the individual merits, wore them down."
This evidence pointed the researchers to the concept of decision fatigue. That every decision we make, tires us, sometimes to the point where we choose to make the safest decisions.
"Decision fatigue helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at colleagues and families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket and can’t resist the dealer’s offer to rustproof their new car. No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain. You start to resist any change, any potentially risky move — like releasing a prisoner who might commit a crime. So the fatigued judge on a parole board takes the easy way out, and the prisoner keeps doing time."
The full article is lengthy but well worth reading to discover what we can do to be aware of this happening in our lives and what we are able to do to make the best decisions possible.
