Everyone has experienced that feeling of being completely exhausted and not being able to make decisions because of it. But there must be a better way to address these times than just muddling through, right? After all, the world’s most successful people seem to be able to handle making decisions easily at any point in time, regardless of their mental fatigue.
Mental exhaustion is a major distraction, so you have to be able to learn to work with it and around it. Pushing through will get you nowhere when you’re dealing with that kind of fatigue. Burnout coach Dr. Alexis Kennedy had a better answer.
Dr. Kennedy acknowledged that most people just reach for caffeine when every choice feels like it’s too much. That’s obviously not the healthiest option for your brain or your body, though. Instead, she presented another idea that she claimed CEOs actually use in their own lives.
“Here’s a caffeine-free solution called decision batching,” she said. “It’s revolutionizing how successful people manage their brain energy. Instead of fighting through brain fog, they strategically group similar choices based on when their brain is operating best.”
Dr. Kennedy explained how you can do this relatively easily. “Create three daily decision buckets,” she said. “Morning — clear mind, afternoon — autopilot, and evening — zero brain power.”
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From there, she said, you can sort the choices you need to make into each of the decision buckets based on how difficult it will be for your brain. For example, she said quarterly budgets should probably be a part of the morning, while cleaning out your cutlery drawer is a safe bet for the evening.
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What Dr. Kennedy proposed is far from pseudoscience. As she said, “Neuroscience explains why this works so well. Your prefrontal cortex, your brain’s CEO, depletes with every decision. Without a system, you burn premium mental resources on low-stakes decisions.”
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She connected this all back to the highest performers of all, the successful CEOs of the world. “The secret top performers understand that greatness doesn’t come from pushing through mental exhaustion,” she said. “It comes from working with your brain’s natural rhythms.”
Other sources back up what Dr. Kennedy said as well. For example, an article published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience stated that those who have experienced damage to their prefrontal cortex “often show a marked inability to make choices that meet their needs and goals.” This means that the prefrontal cortex is closely connected to our decision-making process, and we need it to be healthy to make good choices. If too much energy has been used up by the prefrontal cortex, then decision-making becomes more difficult.
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According to psychiatrist Dr. Lisa MacLean, MD, the chief wellness officer at Henry Ford Health, there are a few other tactics you can try to mitigate decision fatigue as well. She recommended making choices easier by doing things like making grocery lists so you don’t have to decide what you need at the store. She also said you can delegate by allowing others to make decisions that are not crucial for you to make yourself. It’s okay to trust and rely on others.
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Additionally, she agreed that the hard things should be done in the morning. She said, “The morning is when we make the most accurate and thoughtful decisions, and we tend to be more cautious and meticulous.”
We live in a world that’s full of decisions to be made, and it’s easy to become fatigued by them all. Even when you’re dealing with that exhaustion, there are simple steps you can take to still be as successful as a CEO with your choices.
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Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
