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Decision Fatigue

In decision making and psychology, decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making.

I could write about this topic all day but today my main goal is to just bring your attention to it so you can start to see how it impacts you. So how does it relate to your health and fitness?

Decision fatigue makes it difficult to sustain self-control, which can make it hard to stick to your goals or stay ‘on the wagon’. It also makes you revert to making choices that are easy or habitual which aren’t always positive.

You might not think about it but every decision you make leads to some state of decision fatigue, so as the day goes on without realising it you will start to make worse decisions, or at least find it harder to make good decisions.

Decision fatigue also affects your ability to make positive trade-offs. Meaning you’ll struggle to give up one thing in order to get another. ie Watching TV overexercising.

Consider the difference of how you feel at the start of the day versus the end, yes you’re more tired in general but how common is it that you finish your day and think to yourself that you don’t even want to have to make a decision on what to eat for dinner? Yes! See my point?

Now there are a heap of different methods you can use to alleviate some decision fatigue but I’m only going to share 1 with you today, and it’s a huge one that will have a massive impact on you and your success.

  1. Plan ahead of time – create your plan, make as many decisions ahead of time as you can, and stick to it. You want to create a routine you can follow each week and minimise your daily decisions.

Example: Plan what, when, where, and how you are going to exercise that week, and can it be repeated each week? You don’t want to be coming up with all of those decisions each and every day on top of everything else you are doing. Getting your workout gear ready the day before is another decision you won’t have to make on the day.

You can apply this to any area in your life and it will make a huge difference. Give it a try yourself and reach out for help if you need it.

Nathan Spring