My friend Patrick Halliday showed me this article on decision fatigue. I hope I’m not being too much of a geek showing it to you but it’s really interesting if you can get through it.

For the attention-poor, here’s a summary:

Making decisions is tiring. We get sick of it and less good at it the more of it we do. By the end of a long day of decision-making, we are making poor decisions – reckless and short term focused or deciding not to do anything. Our brains get depleted of the ability to make decisions. There’s hope, though – food helps – if we take a break and we eat, we pick up (and it explains why we get cravings, too).

People with the best self control which is related to decision-making) structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings (oops), they avoid temptations like all you can eat buffets and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making decisions all the time.

Here’s the learn for business owners:

Plan your days and your weeks ahead, using your diary or a tool like Groundhog Week (Conserve your decision-making energy).

Eat properly, feed your brain.

Make important decisions early in the day, before you are tired.

Jon Dale
Small Fish Business Coaching Northern Rivers
www.smallfish.com.au