I. #

Life involves plenty of hard decisions. Should I switch jobs? Should I marry him? Should I move abroad? Then there are the “easy” decisions: which pyjama to wear or which brand of laundry detergent to buy. Although it doesn’t matter which option you choose here, choosing is hard. In fact, if you think of buying laundry detergent as an optimisation problem, taking into account things like social impact, price and quality, I’d expect the optimisation problem to be NP-hard! Here’s Zvi:

When you have a choice, you must stop what you’re doing, and choose. […] Making a random slash arbitrary choice might not be hard (although sometimes it is) but first you have to choose to choose at random. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. There’s no escape!

This leads to one of the big curses of adulthood - decision fatigue.

II. #

Most of us are aware that choosing is draining. Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks to reduce the number of decisions in a given day. Should I Stay or Should I Go is basically a three-minute rant about how terrible it is making decisions¹. The reason going to IKEA can be so tiring is that it involves making many small choices. Getting to choose among many options is only fun up to a certain point.

According to Wikipedia, decision fatigue is “the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making”. Decision fatigue arises from a broader phenomenon called ego depletion. Intuitively, this is the idea that willpower works like a battery. If we exert a lot of mental effort at one task, then we cannot exert as much mental effort at subsequent tasks without recharging. Making decisions drains our willpower battery.

The phenomena of decision fatigue and ego depletion have been demonstrated in a number of amusing studies. A striking example is the study on Israeli judges, demonstrating the so-called hungry judge effect.

Computer science offers another way to think about decision fatigue. While a psychologist might speak of ego depletion, a computer scientist might speak of computational complexity. Here’s from Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths:

“One of the implicit principles of computer science, as odd as it may sound, is that computation is bad: the underlying directive of any good algorithm is to minimize the labor of thought. When we interact with other people, we present them with computational problems—not just explicit requests and demands, but implicit challenges such as interpreting our intentions, our beliefs, and our preferences. It stands to reason, therefore, that a computational understanding of such problems casts light on the nature of human interaction.”

Further, the authors go on to advocate for what they call “computational kindness”. When interacting with people, we should try sharing the computational cost of making decisions. If you prefer a particular restaurant, don’t hesitate to indicate your preference. Although you’re trying to be polite by saying you’re indifferent, the other person might be relieved to hear you’re craving a particular kind of food.

III. #

The first step in dealing with decision fatigue is to notice it (as with so much else related to mental well being, I guess). Then one is in a better position to either make a quick, haphazard decision or recharging one’s willpower battery, so one can make a better decision later. This is easier said than done, though.

For example, I recently planned a trip to London, booking flights, finding accommodation, coordinating with others, etc. Because I was excited about the trip, I didn’t notice when decision fatigue kicked in. If I’d known that it was decision fatigue, I wouldn’t have planned the trip in as much detail.

In practise, noticing decision fatigue is hard. One can always practise the skill of noticing, although it takes a lot of time. Another strategy would be trying to identify situations involving many choices and recalling how it felt. For instance, typical triggers of decision fatigue might be shopping, planning or coordinating with others. Analysis paralysis or a feeling of frustration might be good proxies for decision fatigue.

But one can also take preventative measures. We can cut out a surprising number of choices from our everyday lives by coming up with default actions for various situations. For example, I don’t want to only wear black turtlenecks, but I do have a default outfit - a uniform of sorts. In Google Calendar, I also have a calendar describing my ideal week, so I don’t have to decide which lectures to attend on a day-to-day basis. Or at the supermarket: pick the cheapest toothpaste.

Insignificant non-recurring choices can be batched, so one doesn’t go into choosing mode too often. One can even gamify the experience of making choices. For instance, I could have challenged myself to plan the trip within a given time frame.

IV. #

One of the best things about being an adult is that you get to do whatever you want. Getting to choose is a privilege, after all. It’s a privilege we should use.