Powerful Tools to Overcome Decision-Making Fatigue

Let me set the scene for daily decision-making:

New job or stay in current job?
Salad or pasta for dinner?
Break up or stay in the relationship?
Buy the outfit or walk out of the store?
Go out or spend the night at home?
Start a business or spend your whole life wondering, “what if?”

Multiple times a day you’re making decisions about your life. Some of those decisions are minor (what should I eat for lunch?) and some are major (should I marry this person?).

Some decisions are easy to make and others paralyse you with fear.

At times, it can feel as though you cannot escape the incessant decision-making process. Turns out, you may even be suffering from decision-making fatigue.

What is Decision-Making Fatigue?

Decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making.

This can be accompanied by fear, discomfort, stress, nervousness and decision-making paralysis.

In Willpower, Roy Baumeister notes that making decisions (even trivial ones) costs willpower. We have a finite store of willpower at our disposal on a day-to-day basis that we need to replenish on a regular basis with food, sleep and rest. This is the reason why Steve Jobs always wore the same outfit every day.

All of this means that decisions may be robbing you of willpower. On the flip side, you can train yourself to harness the power of decision and use the power to design an incredible life.

Harness the Power of Decision

Tony Robbins, in Awaken the Giant Within, provides some key points that you can use to harness the power of decision:

Remember the true power of making decisions. After all, you can use them to change your entire life.
Realise that the hardest step in achieving anything is making a true commitment – a true decision. Carrying out your commitment is usually much easier than making the decision itself.
Make decisions often as you’ll get better the more that you practice.
Learn from your decisions and gather information so that you can improve your decision-making process.
Stay committed to your decisions but stay flexible in your approach.
Enjoy the decision-making process and hold the expectation that something incredible waits around the corner.

If we use the key points raised by Robbins, we can begin to view decisions as incredible opportunities that have the ability to shape our destiny at any point in time. You may just need to update your decision-making framework.

“Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.”
Benjamin Disraeli

The Win-Win Model

“The irony”, as Susan Jeffers puts it in Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, “is that by not choosing, we are choosing.”

Why? We’re worried that one path leads to the failure and the other to our salvation. We’re concerned that we’ll make a mistake or we’ll forgo an incredible opportunity.

What if we reframed the way we viewed the decision-making process? What if we adopted a “win-win” approach instead of a “win-lose” approach to the decisions that we make?

The “win-win” approach suggests that both paths you can take are going to be right. Why? On each path lies the opportunity to grow, learn and experience life in a new way.

The Ultimate Decision-Making Framework

I use a few frameworks to facilitate my own decision-making process especially in regards to the BIG decisions that I need to make in my life.

Frameworks become useful tools that we can use to quickly filter and process information around a decision.

I’ll be sharing 3 of these frameworks in a upcoming free webinar. You can find more details here.

A Commitment to Commitment

So make the commitment to quit your job, leap into a new relationship, start the side business and trust that a) you have the ability to handle whatever unfolds and b) the outcome is going to lead you to something more incredible that you could ever have imagined.

I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes on this very topic:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!” _ H Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951

Don’t spend your life making up your mind.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready …. here are 4 ways I can help you create a life you LOVE:

Grab a copy of my FREE Ultimate Decision Making Framework. My clients and I are obsessed with with this Framework.

I use The Ultimate Decision Making Framework to ensure my decisions are in alignment with my overall Purpose. I know you will love it as much as I do! – Click Here

Join the Purpose and Profit community and connect with visionary’s and business owners who are also driven to create a life they love

It’s my Facebook Group where driven individuals learn how to create a Purposeful and Profitable life. – Click Here

Take my Purpose eCourse

I have developed a series of Foundational eCourses that will give you the skills, knowledge and life tools that you need to begin designing a life, relationship, career or business that you are in love with. If you want to live your own definition of success, start here with proven tools, strategies and formulas.

Ready to begin your next chapter? If so, I’d love you to join me…– Click here

Work with me and my team privately

If you’d like to work with me 1:1 to unlock me to unlock your Purpose… just send me a message with the word “Purpose”… tell me a little about yourself and what you would like to work on together, and I’ll get you all the details! – Click here