Understanding decision fatigue in busy executives

You start your day with the best intentions: a to-do list neatly recorded in your planner, meetings scheduled and coffee in hand. But by 3 PM, you’re staring at an email like it’s a magic eye puzzle (remember those?!), hoping that if you squint hard enough, the answer will just appear. It’s not that you lack focus or discipline, although let’s be honest focus can become difficult when we hit the afternoon slump! That said, the culprit is subtler—decision fatigue. For busy executives, it’s an invisible drain on productivity, clarity, and leadership effectiveness. What if the real problem isn’t that you have too much to do, but too many decisions to make?

What is decision fatigue?

Decision fatigue is the deterioration of decision-making ability after making many decisions. It’s essentially saying that decision power is a limited resource, and over time it gets depleted. Think of your brain like a smartphone battery: every decision, big or small, drains a bit of power. Except there’s no handy battery icon to warn you when you’re running on 2%. Eventually, even simple choices feel overwhelming. 

On average, people make around 35,000 decisions every single day. While many of these are subconscious or minor, such as deciding what to eat or which route to take to work, they still contribute to the mental load. For executives, where work can be mentally demanding, the stakes can be higher as they’re faced with business choices that demand critical thinking, strategic foresight, and effective team management. This relentless decision-making cycle gradually erodes mental energy, leaving you drained and wondering why choosing what to have for dinner feels like solving a Rubik’s cube blindfolded (although I can’t even solve it with my eyes open!). This constant cognitive load leads to poorer decisions, procrastination, and burnout.

The science behind decision fatigue

The concept of decision fatigue has been widely discussed, though not without some debate. Research showed that judges were more likely to deny parole later in the day due to mental fatigue. A well-known study analysed over 1,100 parole decisions made by Israeli judges and found that prisoners seen earlier in the day had a significantly higher chance of being granted parole. As the day progressed, the likelihood of a favourable ruling dropped sharply, only to spike again after meal breaks when the judges were mentally refreshed. This highlights how cognitive depletion, even among highly trained professionals, can lead to defaulting to the ‘safest’ or most conservative option, which in this case was denying parole. The same cognitive drain may affect executives, causing them to lean towards easier, less optimal decisions when mental energy is low, which can ripple across their teams and impact overall business outcomes.

However, some recent studies have questioned the robustness of decision fatigue as a universal phenomenon. For example, research examining surgeons’ performance throughout long shifts found minimal declines in decision quality, suggesting that factors like task familiarity, stakes involved, and individual resilience can influence how cognitive load impacts decision-making. Critics argue that while mental exhaustion is real, its effects might not be as straightforward or predictable as suggested in some of the earlier research.

It’s not just complex decisions that wear us out—choosing lunch, replying to emails, even picking an outfit all chip away at your mental bandwidth. And while some experts debate whether decision fatigue is real, the time spent on these small decisions is undeniable. Research suggests that we spend an average of 3 hours a day making choices about what to eat, what to wear, what to watch, and even when to go to bed. So, even if decision fatigue isn’t draining your energy in the way the science suggests, there’s still considerable time to be saved by streamlining these everyday decisions. These seemingly minor choices accumulate, quietly draining our cognitive energy and leaving us more vulnerable to poor decision-making when it really counts.

How to reduce decision fatigue

Here are some suggestions on how I would reduce decision fatigue, as a time management expert.

1. Reduce the decisions you make daily. Can you create routines that eliminate some of your choices? Think about Steve Jobs who was famous for wearing the same outfit everyday. Decide on your bedtime in advance, and stick to it (I’m typically asleep at 10pm every night, whether it’s a week day or weekend!). Perhaps you have a routine for when you work out, or specific days for key business activities (hello, time blocking).
2. Plan ahead. I try to plan my week ahead of time, and I do my planning when my energy is at its best. This means when I sit at my desk to work, I don’t need to expend energy in coming up with the plan for the day, it’s already in place. 
3. Delegate. You may be used to delegating tasks, but you can also delegate authority for decision making. Empower your team to make decisions within their area of expertise.
4. Create decision making frameworks. Use checklists, criteria grids and flow charts for recurring decisions. Have your team work within defined tolerances or guard rails, and have them escalate when these are breached.
5. Use templates. Leveraging email templates can be helpful, and you could even automate email responses using a CRM (customer relationship manager).
6. Time block. If you work best in the mornings, block out time here for the tasks that need strategic decision making. Perhaps you can batch small decisions together to avoid context switching, but spread out your big choices. Experiment! I get all my clients to play around and experiment with their schedule to figure out what works best for them.
7. Let some decisions be ‘good enough’. Not every decision has to be perfect. You may also want to set yourself a time limit for making decisions to avoid over thinking. 
8. Automate. Some decisions can be automated, for example I don’t make a decision to save or invest money each month, I have set up bank transfers that automatically happen.

Leadership isn’t about making every decision—it’s about creating systems so you don’t have to. Your job isn’t to be the busiest person in the room; it’s to be the clearest thinker.

By creating routines, setting boundaries, and building decision-making systems, you can reclaim mental space for what really matters—strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, and leading with clarity.

Remember, every decision you don’t have to make is energy saved for the ones that count.

So, where can you start today? Maybe it’s as simple as planning tomorrow’s outfit, automating a small task, or blocking out time for focused work. Small changes compound over time, creating a ripple effect that transforms not just how you manage your workload, but how you lead your life.

Let me know how you get on!

Sarah Stewart – Time Management Expert