Decisions, decisions. Whether it’s looking through the closet for something to wear, sorting through restaurants to find a good takeout spot or figuring out what to watch on TV — our everyday lives are filled with many decisions. And living in a world with endless choices at our fingertips can be downright exhausting.
That tired feeling, experts say, has a name: decision fatigue. Just like your physical energy might be low after a workout, your mental energy to make good choices can run out when you're overly taxed from the burden of a large number of decisions. When that happens, it’s difficult to avoid temptations, and you're prone to take one of two shortcuts instead of diligently weighing the options: choosing something impulsively or avoiding the choice altogether.
"People can make an impulsive decision, or they can really think things through carefully,” says Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist who coined the term decision fatigue. “It’s the latter that piles up into decision fatigue. You know, the feeling of ‘I’ll do whatever you want tonight, I just don’t want to make any decisions.’”
