Join our hosts Brett Hale, Taylor Lowe, and Ben Glathar uncovering the relationship between Cholula, radishes, and decision fatigue. The effects of decision fatigue are felt in our personal and work lives. This discussion targets the main symptoms of decision fatigue, including poor concentration, decreased willpower, and procrastination, drawing from their own experiences we can all relate to.

However, fear not! In this spicy episode, the hosts are armed with practical tips and strategies to combat decision fatigue, ranging from simplifying choices to establishing routines. Whether you're stuck in a never-ending cycle of indecision or simply interested in understanding the psychological aspects of decision-making, this show offers laughter, insights, and "Aha!" moments aplenty. So grab a cup of coffee, tune in, and join Brett, Taylor, and Ben as they navigate the complexities of decision fatigue and empower listeners to regain control over their decision-making abilities. Get ready to conquer decision fatigue!

Show Links:

Getting Things Done Book by David Allen- Amazon (affiliate link)

Getting Things Done Book - Blinkist.com

How to Stop Overthinking Everything

Roy Baumeister Self-Control Study

How awesome is a Christian Brown story?

Did Yeah. I don't know it. So he's the guy.

He was our rookie.

Know he won three high school

state high school championships in a row.

All right.

Went to. Kansas.

Won a national championship.

Last year at Kansas.

Drafted to the Nuggets

and then wins the NBA finals. Yep.

He literally has nothing else to do. Yep.

He's just done with basketball.

Yeah.

He should retire right now.

Yeah, He won.

Now. That's wild. Yep.

And side note at the there's a sports

collectibles store, and he was over there signing.

You serious?

Yeah.

And the line, like, I thought about it for about 5 minutes.

The problem was, is that

I was thinking about, you know, whether I could go get this autograph,

but then I also had to go to Whole Foods to get some groceries.

Forget the question. Then.

I was trying to think about, you know, should I get Chick-Fil-A home?

And right about then, I wasn't sure what to do.

Oh, my.

So all I could do was leave.

And I don't know what kind of cars that

but I just I had all these decisions and thoughts going on in my head.

You guys, I mean, Brett, do you know what would make somebody

think about too many different things and kind of almost freeze up, you know?

Yeah, I do it at my house.

My wife and I both.

If somebody asks what's for dinner, we about lose our minds.

Mm hmm.

Because at the end of the day, we have something called decision fatigue.

Oh, don't. Don't.

Interesting. Yes, And I.

This is funny.

I know we have talked about it quite a bit.

I actually thought we.

Not necessarily turn the phrase or made that up ourselves,

but it sounded so specific that it really wasn't a thing to me.

And so when I started actually doing research on it and I was like, holy,

that is actual thing, and I would group it in the burnout category.

It's a little different.

At the same time, yeah, it is similar, but it is different.

Yeah.

What is your what is your take, Taylor and what it is.

Well, I'd like to start my spiel with a fun fact.

Brett.

Sometimes you ask for if anyone has any fun statistics to start the show off with.

And my my research and internet rabbit holes took me down

to what was the American Medical Association, actually.

And it's like, well, it was like a whole bunch of stuff here on decision fatigue.

It's like an actual not like a chronic medical condition,

but it's just like, Hey, yeah, this is the thing.

And in there I learned that the average American makes over

35,000 decisions a day and more.

Many of them aren't conscious.

You know, by the time you've gone to bed, your brain has processed a choice,

some choices, some type by like 35,000 times a day.

That's just insane. That sounds like a stat.

The resumes find 540 years old.

It's very simple.

It's just really hard to believe.

It's really hard to believe. Yeah.

I try to like I left a little amount around for some of the stuff

and like the other one I found was like, you make over

some somewhere between two and 300 food decisions a day.

And you think about that you're, you're maybe in,

you know, maybe two or three meals a day with some snacks in between, you know, or

you know, whatnot.

And you're like, within the scheme of that,

you've got like 2 to 300 little blip attributes that are happening

all through that, which is. I believe that.

I believe that I look at it as about, I don't know, 10 a.m. ish.

I think every minute thereafter I'm probably saying, no, it's

not time for a beer yet

for the rest of it.

Yeah, right.

That those add up.

Yeah.

So I mean that really makes me want to sit down

and try not to make a decision just to see if that is painful in some way.

Right. Yeah.

Like your short circuiting your brain all of a sudden. Yeah.

You think about what happened to me this morning.

I had a breakfast burrito,

and there was a packet of delicious Tallulah next to said breakfast burrito.

And I picked it up and I tried to open it and I try to open it.

And I thought to myself, Hmm, I think my hands are too slippery

from eating donuts.

So then I wiped off my hands and I tried to open it.

And then I thought, maybe this is a side open packet of Kulula.

And I tried to open it and I try to open it

and then I put it down and I started eating my burrito without kulula.

And then I thought, but I wanted to Lula

so I had to go find scissors and cut the packet open.

And then I decided, What do I do?

Do I just lay this packet down on my plate and am I going to just hold it?

Because then I got too big of a thing

and I just covered my whole burrito and Tallulah, I.

Was I was curious about your technique.

When I saw. That I cut too big of a hole.

So I was like, I don't know what to do with this packet.

If I set it down, the chute is going to spill out.

So in that little space, I probably made 35 decisions.

Yeah, that's quite the journey you took us on.

We will watch that happen and maybe it's even way more complex.

And I know it was complex, but yeah, yeah, that's.

A that's a, that's 20 seconds in the, in the brain.

A bend right there.

That's how that goes down.

That's funny. Break it down to micro decisions.

It's not opening bean. Try again.

Yeah, Still not opening. Bean

Trying to get.

It's not opening.

Ben Bean Wipe off your hands.

That's how that went.

So I probably make 100,000 decisions.

Today. Anyway. Sorry. Go ahead.

I would.

I wonder if the complexity of decision is plays into this at all

or it's just a sheer amount of numbers that add up.

Let's roll back to just a bit and what would like to find decision fatigue?

Did anybody find like a definition?

Yeah, I'll jump into that too, because it was also American Medical Association.

So the definition, according to Dr.

McLean, that AMA, which is a psychiatrist, I think it's a she.

The idea that after making many decisions, your ability

to make more and more decisions over the course of the day becomes worse.

The more decisions you have to make, the more fatigue

you develop and the more difficult it can become.

When we talk about the ability to make the decision,

does that mean sometimes it's not a binary thing, right?

I made a decision.

Sometimes there's some outcome that can be based on the

the billions of options you have for the decision.

Yeah.

So one

other thing that I kind of looked into, and this is from a different article,

Will HPR, I like me my Harvard Business Review and I can get get some

article called How to Stop Overthinking.

And they they paint this picture of

when when you come to the decisions, whether it's binary or otherwise.

One of the things that I think we run into is and we don't think about it

this way, but it's perfectionism

because we all know you hear the term perfectionism.

You're like, Yeah, perfect.

Perfect isn't a real concept.

It's not something we should strive for.

I'm not trying to be perfect, but what, what what they're getting at is

your perfectionism is the same thing as trying to make the right decision.

This idea that there is a right decision

and therefore all other decisions are wrong.

Here's what really weighs on your brain.

And when you're trying to make a decision, it's like you've got this.

You kind of approach it with this

all or nothing mentality almost by default sometimes.

And that's where that fatigue element comes in, is because you're

you feel like you've got to make the right call

so that there's lots of right calls.

Paralysis by analysis of one or the other.

Fun one that's don't don't let perfect be the enemy have done.

Yeah yeah, exactly.

So which you know that that hit me I'm just like

yeah I'm not trying to be perfectionist, but yeah, I try to make great decisions,

but you're like, Oh, shit.

Oh, wait, If it isn't, if this is a right decision,

then that means all other decisions are wrong.

That's had my brain, you know, going all morning.

And I'm like, yeah, I'm trying to decide what shirt to put in.

I'm like, There's no right decision. Just pick a shirt, tailor. Like

taking that example, I

was thinking about shopping actually similar, but the weather matters.

It does matter which shirt you pick, you grab like a turtleneck on a summer day.

You're not going to be a happy camper. That's true. That's true.

So that's a complexity thing of like, what information do I know?

How does that play into the decision?

And obviously, like the the consequences of the decision matter,

Like what are the what's the worst outcome,

which is probably where we spend a lot of our time.

The fear and uncertainty you're trying to avoid the worst case

scenario versus making sure something just good to.

Happen is another thing, just more attack.

And worst case scenario that also came out of HPR paper.

It's called the ten, ten, ten exercise.

And so you're supposed

to picture the worst case scenario and then think about it going wrong

that your decision and it goes just as terrible as you can imagine.

Think about how you feel in ten weeks

and ten months and then ten years.

And that based on how you feel like with each of those, can kind of help

you calibrate how much energy and effort should I make this decision?

Ten weeks, ten months and years?

Yep, exactly.

So, Ben, you told us earlier you had made a decision to build a birdbath. Yes.

How does that make you feel in ten weeks, uncertainty wise?

Uncertainty wise?

Is this the exercise step? Yeah.

The fears and uncertainty in ten weeks.

Well, I had this.

You make a birdbath and then it falls apart.

Falls apart, say, in a week.

So that's the worst case scenario. As worst case and worst case.

Scenario. Build a birdbath and it falls apart.

Over the birdbath.

Well, I don't know. There's also the scenario.

What if the birds see it as like a tiny gladiator place

and start killing each other? That's true.

Now you have a bird graveyard, just carcasses around your your baths.

Two birds with one stone birdbath.

The worst case scenario is

I would be sad that my bird bath was a failure.

In ten weeks. And ten weeks.

I would throw it away. Okay.

And then how do you feel in ten months?

Would you be upset in ten weeks about any monetary loss?

Now? I guess maybe that it was I guess the sadness would be that I failed.

You know.

You wouldn't be sad that you tried, though.

You wouldn't be sad trying.

It is a waste of time.

No. In ten weeks would you pick up the project again and do it over? No.

Okay. All right. Ten months.

Ten months.

I might just start having some regret that my bird bath that I made the year

before wasn't operational for this upcoming year.

Do you think you would want to try again at that point?

Would you be like, Oh, maybe this would be different?

That time?

I, I might want I would think I would try again.

The failure would come rushing back into.

Next summer and I might be a little scared.

I guess I'm going to put a cage over at Thunder.

It'll be a Thunderdome style like.

Yeah.

Two birds into. The.

In ten years you like.

And in ten years I need a bird bath.

Yeah.

That doesn't sound like me.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Or you're like, Son, I bestow upon you.

This bird bath.

In in my father's birdhouse. Yeah.

Go forth and take care of the birds.

Yeah.

Go forth and populate birds.

And that's an interesting exercise. It is.

I think I think you'd have to shorten it for most.

I mean, when you buy. Ten days.

I tend to 10 hours.

Minutes to hours I like. Yeah.

Kind of just shifting it days, months are days, weeks, months

because like ten years, it's like who thinks about anything

in the scheme of ten years now?

Maybe it's like big business decision.

Yeah, I.

Like, like moving or,

you know, Yeah, Hey, I'm going to move move to Ireland or something, But we.

Got like a merger and acquisition, right?

Like ten years. How that, how might this be?

But yeah, building the bird that probably can.

Yeah. Going to matter.

If I were to require the people at my company to come back

in person full time.

That's a good, that's a good one.

I can see how that applies like that.

The long term ramifications and working through not to be

the dead horse about complexity, but that feels like that,

you know, the more complex the decision, the longer lasting

the consequences will be maybe are not even necessarily right.

If I decided to murder somebody.

Oh my.

So it's taking a dark turn.

Glider bird. Go. I'm just murder.

I'm just going into a crazy scenario where it's like it's a quick decision.

Simple.

Yeah. Murder.

So don't. Murder somebody. Credit binary.

And so the time frame really doesn't matter.

Ten days, you're like, I might feel bad about myself as a human being.

Ten weeks.

Yeah, I feel bad about myself.

And I'm in jail ten years.

I feel really bad. Yeah.

Now, you've been in jail for all this time, and.

I would be rehabilitated even. Yeah.

And you still feel bad. And I'd still be a must.

Still be in jail. And murder.

Wow. You know what I was reading when I was thinking about this

and reading about it, to your point, is, you know, some of these bigger decisions

and and I think some of the the biggest issue I found with decision

fatigue is that you're not necessarily aware that it's happening.

Right.

And then you might have decision fatigue

and make a hasty not thought through decision.

Yeah.

So when you start talking about mergers and acquisitions

and return to work or even or hiring somebody, right.

Like using potentially outdated mode of, you know, looking over resumes

and how do we determine who the best person is

when all of a sudden you are sitting there at 4 p.m.

on Thursday and you said, all right, I'm going to make a decision and give somebody

an offer letter on Friday.

If you're suffering decision fatigue, you actually might not be

in the right mind space or fully capable.

Sound mind. Of of making the best choice.

Yeah, but you've set this deadline up

and you've pushed this to the limit where now you're making a choice.

Yeah.

And a lot of the stuff we talked about where, you know, Brett,

you gave a funny example, you know, with you and your wife

about, you know, dinner and can't make a decision.

But now put that to something real by hiring or firing or, you know, whatever.

When I was researching this and thinking about it,

that that's what I came to is I'm like, holy cow,

this plays a big role in all of our lives and we don't talk about it.

You just hit a vein with me that I didn't even consider

until this moment, thinking through decisions

that my leaders have made in my career that have affected me,

whereas let's just say decision fatigue played a part in it.

They made a poor decision.

They upped make another decision to save face rather than to correct

the decision and start.

You know, they're throwing good money after bad, however you want to phrase it.

But that to me, that's a very powerful.

Thought that's got my gears.

Turning to also from American Medical was the opinion this picture of

it was actually a strategy there they kind of suggested to help fight it.

Think about the timing of your decisions.

And they said you want to save your big decision making for the morning.

You're fresher, you've got a limited bucket of willpower

or decision making ability, Right? You want to do it

when it's maxed out, right?

Well, willpower is definitely finite.

Yeah, exactly.

So like morning is for big decision making.

The afternoon is kind of like a plateau zone

where your decisions are maybe a little bit more intuitive.

Yeah, you are putting some analysis into it, but your bucket's depleted,

and then by the evening, your impulse mode, right?

Like it's just your impulses

kind of make all your decisions and, and you're kind of driving you.

And so it makes me think about that in the context of reviewing resumes.

Then you threw that example out.

I wonder when hiring managers are looking at these things and reading these things

and is that having an impact on whether they're pushing a candidate forward or not

or how many candidates they think they're going to go after,

you know, kind of look into.

And the timing of decisions is is another thing to factor in to

how taxing it can be, not just the quantity,

but like a decision in the same decision the morning and the evening, probably

you might have different different outcomes.

Through the hiring lens, too.

I can think of plenty of times

where I've had back to back to back interviews 3 hours straight of interviews.

That candidate at the end is not getting a fair shake or

I shouldn't say that they're not getting the best of me that the first person was.

As far as questions go. Yeah.

And I can almost guarantee you

there's hard questions that you have to ask in interviews

that I might avoid towards the end versus ask them,

which could lead to disastrous consequences as far as hiring goes.

You know, it's funny, The flipside of that is

I've been a candidate who's been doing a lot of interviewing

with interviews like several in a day are kind of back to back.

I always find my best interviews at the end.

Really? Yeah.

And I think it's because, like, impulse, it's impulse is just like muscle memory.

I'm not going to yeah,

I'm not going to pick of the many stories or instances you want me to answer.

I'm just going to like whatever my guts.

And those are the like, the ones that flow the best.

I just. Yeah, I just find that funny. Yeah.

You're unguarded. Yeah, I think that's true.

Yeah, you're unguarded.

You're. You're authentic self at the end of the.

Yeah. You can't really help but be so.

Yeah, like. I can't stop it from happening.

Hey. Hey.

INTERVIEWER This just by the way, I made a state of decision fatigue.

So you're going to get the most authentic me you've ever seen.

That's right. That's pretty cool. Buckle up.

You know, it's funny you say that.

I would say it.

You know, at the end of,

you know, back to back interviews on the interviewers side, I probably lean

into the social conversational side and probably learned more personally

about a person than I would at the beginning as well.

So many of these things that we deal with on a on every personal, professional

and individual personal relationship, you know,

I mean, all these it's really tough to give every decision

the proper amount of of thought and care

and knowing that a good chunk of them are coming out

just from impulse And quite frankly, and, you know, using the interviewer thing,

your example there, I mean, after 3 hours of interviewing, you are

maybe, okay, I don't want to ask business decisions anymore, right?

I want to talk in a different manner.

So it was just automatically changes it up. Yeah.

And it doesn't mean it's wrong.

It's just different. Different.

You know, this is such a great conversation.

I'm like thinking of all the podcasts we've done so far

through this lens of like, just this decision fatigue.

Yeah, the four day workweek.

Why is that productive while you're taking a whole day of decisions off

somebody's plate?

35,000, 30. 5000 just gone.

So does that make the other ones inherently better or the ability

to make those better

because you're not trying to cram them in in a short amount of time and keep going?

You know, obviously burnouts, an easy one, the VUCA,

VUCA, VUCA, indecision, fatigue, you think of change and uncertainty,

the amount of decisions we've talked about how information flows

faster than ever before at us requires just constant decision

making based on the information flow.

Yeah, thorough pandemic.

On the top of that, there's no question that decision fatigue,

you have to start making decisions about how to move around the world now.

Yeah, where can I go?

Where can I go? What's open?

Do I wear a mask?

Would not wear a mask. Get a vaccine? Who am I with?

Are they safe?

What happens if things go wrong? Or am I going to see my mom?

This week is going to have to like not see anybody else boiling

all these issues during the pandemic down to simple stuff like remote work.

Call people back to the office or productivity.

It it just erases so much hardship that we're dealing with now.

It's just from a disappear decision standpoint.

It's blown my mind. RADIO Yeah.

Now there's there's so much that, especially when things are different.

I think the VUCA

example is really on point, right, where you get used to a level, right?

We all have a level of like what we can manage and what we can do,

and then you're forced to tackle something

that's just super huge and on top of what you have to do on a normal day.

And I think for me, what's jumping out too is I'm currently

in a state of being unemployed and I have a lot of time on my hands.

And so, you know, it's kind of funny.

I have conversation with people and they're like, Oh yeah, you know,

like in the time off is it grade and what are you doing with your time?

And I have different responses, you know, based on how I'm feeling.

But like a lot of the time, I'm like, I'm actually going insane because I do.

I work out right now too.

I go to the grocery store, do I, you know, work on the podcast?

Do I walk my dogs?

You know, should I do some lot Like, it's like all these it's

literally decision fatigue.

It hit me until like just recently, but I'm like, wow, shit.

Like one of the things that's like actually really draining

in this moment in my life where I have a lot of time

is just the fact that I have so many things that I could be working on.

And it's as far as fucking exhausting.

Just the high level of ambiguity about.

Time, all the time.

And that's an interesting way to put it.

Like work.

What does work do?

It might put a guardrail around the decisions

you have to make so you know you're swimming in a lane.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, one of the other strategies

that came up as I was doing research was and it was consistent, but it's habit,

habit forming like routines, you know, and all routines and habits are doing

is instilling practices in your body, in your brain that remove decisions.

That's all it is. It's a habit.

You're going to do it, you've done it and it's automatic and you are literally

taking the tax off of your brain, of having to make a decision

on whether you will or won't do it.

And and, you know, you know, again, you know,

kind of connecting the dots for me personally, I'm a very routinized person.

Like I love my routines and my habits.

And so now that I don't really

have that structured day in, day out or in some type of a flow,

it's up and down with like how I how I'm able to manage that.

That's interesting.

And, you know, as you're

talking about this, I'm thinking about when sometimes when you have me personally

have like anxiety about a decision, it's a flip flop.

You end up making the same decision ten times.

Well, I go to the gym now and I don't like I go at noon and you say, Well, go now.

I shoot.

This going to happen, Let's go at noon.

And and you flip flop so many times that, you know, you end up,

you know, working yourself into a tizzy.

Yeah, it's the same it's I think I read it was something called

like second guessing decisions, right.

Where it's like, don't make a decision.

Don't second guess it, because the moment you start doing

that, you're adding extra decisions under decisions you already made.

It feels like you're going gamify this.

Everybody had like a counter above their head. Like, Yeah.

And just watch somebody get stuck in a like a,

a state where it's just like, decisions are going crazy.

Do they think?

Yeah, de de de. De de de de de de de.

Absolutely.

Have you

ever thought about decision fatigue before today?

No, I just I was saying earlier, I didn't I didn't really outside of us

talking about the dinner thing for us, I mean,

because that that's very real for us and it feels silly.

But at the end of the day, the last thing I want to do

is try to like, narrow down dinner options.

There's so many options and then it's like, well, that cascades

into, Well, do we have all this stuff here or do I need to go to the store?

How are we going to do this?

And literally in preparation for this show, I was like, What if we just said,

You wake up,

we say, here's

what we're going to have for dinner, Then I don't even need to worry about that

right?

This might be a routine or discipline thing,

but sometimes I wake up, grab my phone and boom, it's off to the races.

The important decisions aren't getting me made.

Starting there.

I'm probably just reacting to stuff that's just catch up work that I can do later.

So prioritizing

that type of input, protecting myself seems more important than ever.

The point.

Do you sleep with your phone?

It's next to my bed, but it's I think at 10:00 it goes on to

I don't even get notifications after ten, but.

It's very easy to grab it and look at it.

You know, I don't I'm pretty good until I wake up. Yeah.

Soon as I wake up, it's in my.

And where's your phone? Been downstairs.

Good job. Yeah, good job. Use your wife's phone.

No. Well, because.

You could phone under the patty. Stash. Had to.

I had to plug it and downstairs is. I feel.

Is that

just at the end of the night getting caught Doomscrolling, if you will, or.

Are just And I try to give myself a little bit of time

in the morning before without having that be the first thing.

I don't think that there's any benefit and I mean any benefit

to getting news from friends, real news.

Anything work, work, news, work alerts, even a best friend,

you know, saying hello.

I just I don't think there's any benefit to that being the first thing you look at.

What if I sent you a text that said,

I love you, Ben, Wouldn't I feel good to wake up to?

Well, now that would warm my heart and fill my cup.

But that makes me immediately.

I just start thinking external things.

Yeah, right.

Instead of just waking up and being, you know,

and I do a little bit of routine in the morning, but I'm just saying.

But also like waking up and like having some gratitude and being like,

okay, like here's what today is going to bring for me and, and think a little bit.

And whether or not to have a beer.

Well, yeah.

And damn, what's funny though, is that actually right There's a real fire.

You know, you say that

and I immediately become and maybe we should have a beer today

and now and now that the counter starts and all those things.

So I think you're on to something. I don't.

I want to do some homework after the show because I think there is science

behind what you're saying.

I don't think it suggests what you're thinking.

I think there's real evidence that the phone first thing in the morning

and last thing at night is not good for you.

There is. There is.

And I what's hard

is like a lot of the things that I read and look at are not necessary early.

I'm not sure what to say.

Like, well, no, no, we're friendly.

I like science.

See? Right.

So it's somebody that's like kind of like, Hey, we did this

study or, or we talked to some people or we think this right?

I, I always bring it back to almost like a weight loss thing

and my to give tailored it to expand upon your puzzled look on your face at me

is I think

everyone knows how to lose weight the same thing doesn't work for everybody.

Yeah true. And it's not about the science.

It's about literally what would work for you, would not work for me, etc., etc..

So I think some of the stuff that I talk about is kind of the same way.

And when you

find something that works for you, then you've just got to glob on to it.

Yeah, that links decision making habits that that all comes together

and what you just said.

Yeah.

Let me make sure I understand because losing weight,

I think for the most part there's a framework that works.

The science, there's the science piece that works.

Everybody could do that to lose weight.

So what you're arguing, though, that framework isn't necessarily approach

viable to everybody where they are in their life.

What I'm saying, I know how to lose weight.

I could go do it right now if I had the willpower.

And that's exactly what I'm saying.

Okay.

Is is just yeah, there is like a factual like do this.

And again and it's funny because it's also bleeding

in with decision fatigue is but then there's habits Yeah

when you have a habit of doing something

that goes against that and it's really hard.

And I guess that's what I'm trying to say is that so it's not necessarily

a one size fits all solution for everybody.

It's probably a little bit harder to prove to you like a true

medical condition, scientific if you make 1000 decisions or 1001

does, one decision will be will

get less attention than the first 1000 or something like that.

There's no doubt in my mind that there is a path

to help walk you down to to make this a little bit better for you.

Yeah.

So you think about on the same theme any structure diet out there

that you can think of.

And so like I think of Weight Watchers, you know,

I know a little bit this is my mom does it and there removing decisions

that you have to make

by giving assigning points to everything and saying by the end of the day

you should not exceed your point total of x, whatever it is.

Right.

And then these are that like any food, this is the point, individual point

it will have.

And so what they're doing is they're eliminating the complexity

or reducing the complexity around what is your calorie intake, what are your

how much fat are you getting, what's your protein intake?

You know, what are their carbs look like, your sugars and all that stuff.

You know, I think things like like paleo, same thing.

It's like, you know, you're trying to lose weight or to live a certain way.

These are allowed and these are not allowed.

So each of these diets for the same thing are all, let's remove

the amount of decisions you have to individually make to to make

this thing more approachable, this goal that you're after, more approachable.

What I'm thinking now is food prepping.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

It removes almost every decision you have to make around food.

Weightwatchers is probably a step in between that and just, you know,

ad hoc food thought.

And we do hellofresh too, which is, yeah, you know, we still have to cook.

It's almost like food prep, but we sit down

and decide what we're going to eat in days,

a week, get the box in and we know that's taken care of that decisions made.

Yeah, So that's interesting.

And like I'm tying this in my head to entrepreneurship right now and problems

that you want to solve and pain points for customers and new products and all that.

There's probably a really good smoke test for ideas of just to say

as far as decision fatigue goes, how does this idea play into that?

Doesn't it does it make it worse? Does it help?

It is a very easy test that I think

almost always you would want there to be less decisions made.

And I think it goes back to thinking that you have to make the right decisions.

Right.

There's probably a lot of right decisions have a lot of wrong decisions.

Right. And there's a blending of it.

But I think what you're saying is exactly right is how do we in a business setting

or when we're trying to tackle so many problems in entrepreneurship,

find ways to focus on the big thing, spend your energy

there, do the right amount of analysis around it,

and then make, you know, decisions you know, forward as well.

I totally see what you're saying.

Something else that is jumping out to me in response to

that is this thing that I read about.

And as I was doing research, it's called Parkinson's law and never heard of this.

But as soon as I read about it, I'm like, Oh, yes, this is a very real thing.

And Parkinson's law states that work will expand into the amount of time

we allow it regardless of how long the task actually should take.

So think about it like this.

If you've got a presentation to build

at work and you said, okay, I'm going to give myself a month, like

the deadline is a month, it's going to take you a month

to make that presentation when in reality, when you put it together and you

total all the time, probably took a couple of days or a week

or something like that. Right.

And so it leaves me wondering, you know, how do we

and we were talking about this offline, but to bring it back in,

you know, when you've got decisions that are multifaceted, complex,

you need to make many decisions for, say, a project or something

that's like kind of a bigger initiative, right?

Something that's in the horizon.

How do you break it down in a way that doesn't add

to many decisions, but it's getting you to the right level of decision making?

So I've been reviewing right, that Parkinson's love,

Hey, if we're going to get we have anything to do, whatever

amount of time we allow for it, that's that's the time that's going to take.

Plus the how do we, you know, tackle

big projects, big initiatives that have many decisions that go into it.

Your project management showing.

You just blew my mind.

Yeah, you really did.

It's totally I do that all the time.

That's awful.

And I was going to say the negative effect of that is it

contributes to burnout and overwhelmed.

Because instead.

Of finishing something, you, you might have now six

or seven things that that are occupying cognitive space in your head.

Yeah, yeah.

And and it gets back a little bit too.

You know I was saying this about like the, like hiring somebody.

You say, Oh, hey, I'll make a decision on that.

I'll, I'll let you know Friday morning. Okay. Yes. Yeah.

And so then what do you do.

You ruminate on it all week

and because you've given yourself all this, I do that to myself all the time

and I overthink about it and do this and,

and unknowingly and creating more time, energy

decisions, what, you know, all the things that are tied into that.

Two things that don't need that much time.

Absolutely.

And for some reason I mean, I'm yeah, it literally blew my mind

Like I'm sitting here.

I do that all the time.

I'm like, yeah,

I made that choice by Friday thinking that I'm doing myself a favor.

And I it's like a time credit card where it is, I'm not going to pay now.

Yeah, I'm going to pay in six easy installments.

Exactly.

Which means I'm going to, I'm going to be interest.

Yeah, yeah.

25%. Holy cow, man.

There's your book.

We've got a couple ideas from Brett and now Taylor.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I do it all the time too.

I read that, and you just had to, like, look at myself in the mirror for a bit.

Like, what's wrong with you? Like.

Holy cow.

What for?

Something just to add to to help you out, you know?

And I don't know, like, I'm still thinking about this for myself, but

a tip that the this is out of the same HPR article How to Stop Overthinking.

So I'll share it with you

and we'll put it in the show notes as well so folks can access it.

One of the tips was, you know,

instead of giving yourself deadlines for objectives

or tasks, you set yourselves deadlines for making the choice.

So like, instead of saying, I'm going to finish this

by by X amount of time, try to put it out of your mind

and just say, I'm going to decide what I'm going to do with this by date.

Right?

And then as soon as you make the decision, it kind of becomes just execution.

So instead of thinking, oh, what's the priority?

How do I juggle this?

Like, Oh, yeah, I'll have more time for this next week,

try to put all that out of your head.

And as soon as you know you do something,

just say, Look, I've got time on the calendar.

Wednesday at noon, I'm going to choose what to do about this thing

and just keep going about what you're going to do ahead of time.

So I'm still thinking about I would actually execute that in real life.

But the punch line is don't set deadlines for the thing.

Set deadlines for your choices. Okay? Yeah.

Do you have an example that you've used to think through this?

An example?

Not not really like I've been trying, but if I were to try to spitball

one out loud, I think about the presentation.

I've had to make many presentations in my professional life

and typically the things that are being requested, right?

So I'll have a supervisor.

Taylor Can you present on this initiative

at the quarterly stand up in two weeks and I'll say yes.

So there's your deadline. You got two weeks, right?

But I've got my day job, I've got other things to manage,

I've got my outside life.

So instead of saying, okay, I've got two weeks to do this all budget,

an hour or week or, you know, whatever or hour a day or something on this,

I just as soon say, look, I'll put this decision off

on terms of like how I'll build this presentation,

how much time it's going to take, whatever.

I know it's

not going to take me two weeks, but I'm going to decide on Friday, right?

I'm going to just like let this week go by and on Friday

I'll make a choice on how I decide to execute this whole thing.

And then from there, you know, kind of maybe map something out

in terms of the content or make a framework

and then just start to execute.

But I know it's not a great example, but I'm I'm still working through like,

how do I make deadline choices instead of tasks, deadline deadline for tasks?

Yeah, this feels a little bit like agile methodologies where, I mean,

you typically what you're going to do is if you have a sprint in the tech world.

So a period of time, the two weeks, for example, you're like, here's

here's all the tasks that we want to try to get done in this two weeks.

Everything else we know we have to get to, but it's going to sit in some lower

fidelity state where we haven't like made the decisions of how to do things.

We just know that thing has to get done.

What were we deciding on? Right now? It's here.

The top ten priority things we're going to do right now.

We're going to figure out how to get that done

and then we're going to adjust later.

But that's a very process.

Heavy way to think, at least this for me, making decisions that I'm trying to think

practically through how I could apply that to just even making decisions at work.

And I know I know it's a.

I think the example you use right there, though, is, is also many decisions, right?

Yeah.

I mean, if you're if you're making if you're

trying to build a two week sprint for your employees, you know,

and all the things that are going to get accomplished,

I mean that's a lot of decisions.

Yeah.

Versus maybe saying, hey, we've got a two week sprint coming up.

I'm going to give myself until Tuesday to decide what the you know, like

I want those topics are and then taking it off in bite sized chunks,

knowing that you'll still have a lot of decisions around every chunk of time.

Right. Right. And something you said just clicked in my brain.

I think I think the objective here is it's almost like you're going

to go through the same process.

You're going to make the same amount of decisions,

but it's almost like you're deciding

not to spend the energy on that until you need to.

Are you ready to write more like a brain hack?

Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it.

Brain hack. I mean, a lot of that is brain hacks, right?

That were a lot of what we talked about has to be brain hacks.

It's because we're never,

ever going to be able to keep up with demands all the time.

So know and if you're if you're putting some thought into how to think.

Meta.

Maybe, you know, you can move yourself along a little bit faster.

So Brett Taylor gave some really mind blowing thoughts there on this.

What is your research drum up about decision fatigue?

One of the the funniest things I came across, it's

not even necessarily funny, but it's that's fun to read.

There was a study, I think it was in the nineties by this guy

named Bower Meister, and he had a study of 67 people

threw in a room with freshly baked cookies

and then they said, basically, you guys can eat these,

you guys can

eat these, but you can eat radishes, right?

And so he created this really weird atmosphere where people had to abstain

and make the decision not to eat the cookies over and over.

The ones that ate the radishes actually resented

the fact that they ate radishes and wanted the cookies even more.

There was even fun stories in the article,

which I'll put in the show notes about people staring at the glass

like longingly for cookies because they're like, Oh, radishes.

But at the end of this, what they didn't know

is they threw some puzzles at them

and the people that had to abstain from eating the cookies.

Even worse, the ones that ate the radishes, the ones that couldn't

eat the cookies, more trouble doing the puzzles at the end of the day,

because they have spent so time and energy not eating cookies.

Making that actual decision sums up a lot of things we talked about includes food.

You know, if you think about it, the end of your business day,

all the decisions you make and I'm going to bring this back to me and my wife.

I do that.

I walk upstairs fresh out of work.

What's for dinner like? Oh, my.

A, they don't care.

Just throw something in my mouth.

Tell me what to do.

I'll make dinner.

I'd rather make dinner than have to make this decision right now.

Right. And. And she feels the same way.

So it's.

We've come to an agreement that we tried not to ask that question.

That's so it's a taboo topic. It is.

And something so simple. Right.

And you think about how this decision fatigue can really affect

all parts of your life in the pandemic.

All of a sudden, there's a lot more decisions,

maybe there's more stress, and you're running out of your find out

willpower at noon.

You can't even make it through a full day of work, Right?

So what does that mean for a business?

You can't just say productivity is down right now,

you know, to 85% and it's due to remote work.

It's just not true. Yeah.

How do you actually address that as a business?

So the first thing that I wonder

when that question is actually another question and it is

who's making decisions and how is that spread out amongst organization?

I'm going to kick this one to, Ben, because I'm

I'm a little fatigued at the moment.

So funny. Yeah.

No, I would love Ben's take on this.

And what I'm getting at, Ben, is like the theory, the hypothesis in my head

is that the people making decisions aren't plentiful enough,

not for lack of having people to make decisions, but for not having

maybe that trust or level of delegation

granted throughout an entire organization.

Is your decision making too concentrated?

Yeah, I would think about that.

A frame that as our people are empowered

to make decisions and if power, if people are empowered to make decisions

and they don't have to ask so many, if you have a line of ten people, right.

And if every person is kicking X number of questions up

the chain, you can see you end up getting an overload there, Right?

So I think a lot of it would be

comes down to the fact that people are not empowered to make decisions.

The other thing

I think about is that when get into maybe a decision fatigue situation.

Real quick, when you say empowerment, are you saying people aren't delegating

decisions well. Enough?

I think maybe the the an organization like the whole structure,

people are not allowed or maybe don't feel safe to make decisions.

Okay.

So that becomes a very top down culture where.

Okay.

And and then they, of course, are pushing hey, boss, I don't know what to do here.

And they kick it up, but they probably do know what to do.

Right. And if they were empowered, they could just do it right.

As decision fatigue sets in, then people also.

The other problem is, is that even if they are empowered, they start to

second guess themselves, flip flopping, get scared, and then what happens?

You either do one or two things.

You either push your decision out, which just makes it worse.

Or maybe, you know, Brett, you said this earlier,

you know, throwing good money after bad, you may make a poor decision.

But again, your I don't want to.

Put your body in it that Yeah.

You're you're bought in and you don't want to admit

that you screwed up and especially you know

like talking in the in the form of like you hired somebody and we can you're like

oh man, I made a poor decision.

And instead of just addressing that within a week, you.

Well, too late now, here we go.

It's a game of poker at that point.

You like, end it in a and get a chase.

Then here we go.

So I don't think there's any easy answers.

I mean, I think this is a very complex and I think we had kind of talked about it

and thought about it and then how much this conversation has kind of

opened my eyes to how big the situation is

and how I am making it exponentially worse for myself.

That Tallulah got you. It did.

And I got to I got some.

Hot sauce, man.

I got to go.

I got to really I'm really going to spend some time thinking about this

for my own life because I'm disturbed on how much time

I've spent pushing decisions down the road.

Here's a book recommendation real quick for you and for our listeners.

I recommend and I use this, I found it to be very helpful.

It's called Getting Things Done by David Allen,

and it kind of is a it addresses a couple of issues.

It's not just about helping you make decisions, but it really provides

it provides a new kind of life process for how you can help

make your decisions, you know, through not just work but life.

And so I totally recommend it.

It's it's a really good read.

But if you're if you're getting ready

to do some introspection, it might might help.

Okay.

So, Brett,

do you have any input or helpful tips on how to address decision fatigue?

You know, I don't mean a cop out a little bit on a common answer.

In this situation.

You almost have to lean into empathy, whereas as a leader of a company,

you have to understand

if willpower is finite, energy is finite at the end of the day

and you want people at your best, you have to pay attention to their meters.

You have to allow them to do things that fill their cup,

be It go to a Nuggets parade or some special event, take a day off,

take him out to lunch and just talk about something different.

We have to be better about doing that in general.

Otherwise we're going to keep the pedal on the gas

and we're just going to burn the engine out over and over again

and wonder why we spend so much money at the car shop.

You know?

And what jumps out for me,

I love that, Brett, and I want to double down on that train of thought.

I also want to encourage in something that as well as like a board member,

I would try to stresses it's

important to allocate and spread.

And Ben, you kind of mentioned this earlier.

It's up to an organization to help instill a culture of trust to be able to do that

and almost teach employees and team members how to make decisions.

It's it's not it's not even just enough to have the culture of we trust you

to make this decision.

What this conversation is really highlighting for me is you

kind of have to help those people and employees

essentially develop strategies around making decisions. Right.

Understand that there's not just one right answer.

There's probably many.

And so don't fatigue yourself on trying to get it right.

This resonates so well with me.

Just sorry to interrupt.

No, I have been in this place in my career where it's I want more responsibility.

I'm ready for more responsibility.

And somebody says, fine, it's yours.

And you're like, Whoa, wait, what? Like, that's it.

It's just my responsibility now, with with no training, no thought

process in that decision making at that point is full of fear and anxiety.

Absolutely right.

Which brings it I mean, you're going to extend that.

But just imagine the fatigue level of that person who just got that.

And now they're overanalyzing everything and they're again.

Spinning out of control.

It's almost like a personal pandemic, if you will, of a sort

of a very minor sense. Right.

Like it's this huge thing that just got dropped on your shoulders

in addition to all the stuff you do normally in a day.

And now you've got all these extra things to decide.

So it's important to hand that down.

I think it's great for development and great for culture.

We've got to do better at when we're handing that down.

Help coach

how to make sure that that load isn't so massive and that it's more manageable.

It will be more.

But here's how you can manage it

better and and teach you how to make decisions more effectively.

Once again, we suck at developing people who do.

Then any closing.

I want to challenge everyone to think

about the volume of decisions they're making a day.

If nothing else, maybe acknowledge

that we are doing more and thinking more than we than we should.

It sounds weird to say it that way, but seriously, I mean, I think we're we're

we're putting maybe too much thought into many decisions, into things.

You're you're saying avoid some self-inflicted wounds. Yes.

Think about Parkinson's law.

Think about the ten, ten, ten exercise we did earlier to kind of help like,