Most high performers I know carry a badge of honor for being the person with all the answers. They’re always available, always ready to weigh in. Always on. It’s an easy identity to build when you’re good at what you do, and people keep coming to you for direction.
It feels great, until it doesn’t. That identity comes with a cost.
What I’ve found—through my career, raising five kids, running nonprofits, and logging miles—is that trying to be that person burns through your best cognitive resources. It burns through them so fast. And usually, I might add, on the wrong things.
By the time a truly important decision lands on your desk, your brain is fried.
Decision fatigue is a well-documented phenomenon. Psychologist Roy Baumeister’s research on ego depletion showed that the quality of our decisions deteriorates as we make more of them throughout the day. That’s why we see judges granting fewer paroles in the afternoon, and doctors ordering unnecessary tests late in a shift.
The brain treats every decision as a withdrawal from a finite account, and the balance runs low a lot quicker than we think.
I’m not at all immune to this. For a long time, I was mixing high-stakes calls in with the hundreds of small ones that just…didn’t deserve the same mental bandwidth. That’s not to say those little decisions don’t matter, or that we’re somehow slacking.
This is about deliberately protecting your energy.
5 Ways to Save Your Mental Bandwidth
#1 — Systemize everything that doesn’t need to be a decision.
What I eat for breakfast, when I run, what I wear to the office — these are not decisions in my day anymore. They're defaults. Routines are a way of holding off on judgment until situations truly call for it. Saving your brain for the stuff that matters. Steve Jobs wore the same black turtleneck and jeans every day for exactly this reason. I'm not claiming to have his fashion sense, but the principle holds.
#2 — Batch the low-stakes decisions.
Email responses, vendor questions, and scheduling — I handle these in blocks rather than scattered throughout the day. Every time you context-switch to handle a small decision, it costs your brain in two ways. First, in making the decision, then in re-engaging with whatever required deep focus.
That’s what happens when we try to multitask. Instead, focus on lumping the little decisions together in a few bundles throughout the day.
#3 — Set a “good enough” threshold and use it.
Perfectionism masquerades as diligence. I could go on a whole tangent about how perfectionism is less about high standards and more about the fear of failure, but that’s another post for another day.
The point is, you don’t have to agonize over making the “best” decision when there are limited downsides. Imagine torturing yourself with whether to have Chinese for dinner or pizza. It doesn’t really matter, does it?
Sometimes, we just need to choose a reasonable option and move on!
#4 — Protect your mornings.
My best thinking happens when the world is still quiet. That’s why I run early and try to tackle the hardest decision-making work on my plate before noon. I’ve found out when I’m at my sharpest and using that to my advantage.
#5 — Push decisions down the ladder.
I have a wonderful, amazing assistant. She helps me in thousands of ways that no one will ever see. Getting her on my team was one of my best decisions ever because it delegated so many tasks and decisions I didn’t need to handle. That frees my time and energy up for the stuff I’m best suited for.
You might not have an assistant, but I bet you have a team. Delegation is part of good leadership, but it’s also part of your cognitive preservation.
And look, the athletic parallel isn’t a stretch here. In endurance sports, pacing is everything. You can surge in the first miles and feel invincible, but there's always a point later in the race where you pay for it. Decision-making follows the same arc.
The leaders I've seen struggle most with burnout aren't the ones facing the biggest challenges or the highest stakes. They're the ones who don’t pace themselves cognitively.
I’m not saying check out or hand off every task. Rather, I want to be fully present and at my best when it matters most. So I’ve got to be deliberate with my attention and energy.
What's been your experience with decision fatigue — have you found a system that actually works, or is it still something you're figuring out?