Tired of making decisions? You might be suffering from decision fatigue …

A farmer hired a man to work for him. He told him his first task would be to paint the barn and said it should take him about three days to complete. But the hired man was finished in one day. The farmer then sent him to cut wood, telling him it would require about four days. The hired man finished in a day and a half, to the farmer’s amazement. The next task was to sort out a large pile of potatoes. He was to arrange them into three piles: seed potatoes, food for the hogs, and potatoes that were good enough to sell. The farmer said it was a small job and shouldn’t take long at all. At the end of the day, the farmer came back and found the hired man had barely started. “What’s the matter here?” the farmer asked. “I can work hard, but I can’t make decisions!” replied the hired man.

Like the hired man, you might also struggle with making decisions — not because you are incapable, but because you make so many of them! Research estimates that the average adult makes roughly 35,000 choices every single day. This relentless stream of micro-decisions leads to a phenomenon called decision fatigue, where the quality of your choices drops significantly as your mental energy is used up. Every time you pick an outfit, drive through traffic, or choose between two brands of cereal, you are tapping into a limited supply of mental fuel. When that fuel runs low, the brain starts looking for shortcuts to save energy, leading you to either act impulsively or avoid making a choice altogether.

This fatigue is the reason why grocery stores place candy and soda at the checkout line. After an hour of comparing prices and walking through crowded aisles, your willpower is spent, making you a prime target for an unplanned purchase. It also explains why a simple household chore or a work email can feel completely insurmountable by 7:00 p.m.. It’s not that the task has become harder; it’s that your brain has already processed thousands of earlier trade-offs and is essentially closed for business. While this affects everyone, understanding the specific ways it drains different groups can help you identify your own experience with decision fatigue.

The unequal burden of choice
Beyond the biological drain, there is a profound correlation between mental exhaustion and the collapse of the will. In Galatians, Paul warns against growing weary in doing good. This isn’t just a generic pep talk; it is a recognition that “doing good” is a series of active, effortful choices. Integrity, patience, and service are not default states, they are high-energy decisions. When the mind is depleted by thousands of trivial decisions, the capacity to choose the righteous path or the compassionate response may be weakened. We grow weary in doing good not because we have lost our faith, but because we have squandered our decision-making power on the mundane. The “good” requires executive function, and when that tank is empty, we revert to our most reactive, selfish, and low-effort impulses.

Research highlights that while decision fatigue is universal, the stakes of the choices determine how fast the tank empties. Family members making medical decisions for critically ill relatives experience extreme exhaustion because of decisional conflict — the agony of weighing life-and-death options against heavy emotional pressure. Similarly, high-stakes professionals like physicians and judges show measurable declines in judgment as their shifts progress. Doctors become more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics or skip screenings, and judges revert to the safe default of denying parole. If these professionals, trained for high-pressure environments, see their clarity crumble under the weight of too many choices, anyone should expect a similar dip during a standard day.

Perhaps the most significant finding in economic research is how acutely this hits those on a tight budget. For a person with a comfortable income, buying soap or milk is an automatic action. For someone living in poverty, these are tactical decisions requiring a mental calculation of what else must be sacrificed later in the week. This perpetual state of trade-offs means their mental reserves are often drained just by surviving the morning. For the average person, the lesson is clear: any area of life where a system is missing becomes a high-tax zone for the brain, slowly chipping away at the ability to focus on larger goals.

Building systems to preserve mental fuel
One of the most effective ways to manage the loss of mental energy is through the use of “decision defaults.” A decision default is a choice you make once and then apply to every future instance of that same situation. It is a permanent answer to a recurring question. By establishing these rules ahead of time, you don’t have to think about what to do when the situation arises again, you simply follow the pre-set plan. This stops the internal debate that eats up your executive function and protects the mental power needed for the problems that actually require your attention.

Practical defaults can be woven into every part of a person’s routine to lower that 35,000-choice count. In the morning, this might look like having a go-to healthy breakfast for workdays, selecting your entire outfit and packing your gym bag before you go to bed, or checking your calendar for the next day before you leave the office so you aren’t guessing at your priorities. In your digital life, you can set your phone to enter “Do Not Disturb” at a specific time every night, use apps that block distracting websites during work hours, or unsubscribe from promotional emails so you aren’t choosing whether to open them.

The same approach applies to managing a household and personal finances. You can eliminate the “when should I do this?” stress by assigning specific nights for grocery shopping, laundry, or yard work. Automating bank transfers for savings and bill payments removes the monthly struggle of deciding how much money to move. Even social interactions can be streamlined by having a favorite restaurant for lunch meetings, a standing time for a weekly family phone call, or a “standard” gift you buy for every birthday party your children attend. By using a template for common work emails or a set grocery list for staples, you stop the constant re-evaluation of basic tasks. Each of these systems keeps your mental energy available for the moments that truly matter.

Because life is unpredictable, an important decision might still land on your lap at 6:00 PM when you are heading home or dealing with evening chores. When your reserves are this low, your brain is biologically prone to taking the path of least resistance, which often leads to saying “no” prematurely or acting on a reckless impulse. If an urgent, high-stakes choice arises while you are depleted, it helps to recognize that your current state of mind is compromised. Before committing to an answer, taking twenty minutes to detach and stabilize your system with a meal or hydration can briefly restore your ability to think more rationally. Once you return to the problem, breaking a complex choice into small, binary “yes or no” steps reduces the mental load and ensures the final conclusion is based on your best judgment rather than the biological desire to just be done with the day.

By identifying the specific routines that cause a decision fatigue and replacing them with solid, pre-made defaults, you stop wasting your best energy on the trivial “potatoes” of the day. When the volume of small choices is reduced, you ensure that when a truly important decision arrives, you still have the clarity and strength to make it wisely.

Scotty