How to Only Make Good Decisions

Is It Possible, Considering Fatigue and Paralysis?

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. 

The worst thing you can do is nothing.” 

Theodore Roosevelt

A recent article by David Draney triggered me to think about decision-making.

I consider decisiveness to be a key leadership trait. I have found that my days as a leader were filled with quite literally hundreds of decisions. A few major ones (hiring, product innovation, M&A, …), and many, many small and micro-decisions. What they all have in common is the fact that not making a decision was holding up everything and everyone around me.

David addressed decision fatigue. It refers to either a state of mental overload that can impede a person’s ability to continue making decisions, or it refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making. Which is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision making

To illustrate the latter, David refers to Mark Batterson and his book, Win the Day, where he writes about a study by the National Academy of Sciences that examined rulings made by judges over a ten-month period. They were deciding the cases of prisoners on whether they get parole or not. Seventy percent of prisoners whose cases were decided early in the morning received parole. Only ten percent of prisoners received parole at the end of the day.

Batterson says, “Decision fatigue is the deterioration of our ability to make good decisions after making lots of decisions. Decision-making takes mental energy.” 

What if we encounter decision fatigue with our doctor, with the admissions officer handling our application, or when fundraising for a startup? What if we observe it with ourselves? After a day of many decisions, we are less patient when asked to make another, we take less time to consider the impact, and the decision turns out to be not as good as those made earlier in the day.

I can certainly look back and know that this was exactly what happened to me at times. Somewhat jokingly, I state in some conversations today that I was ok because more than 50% of my decisions were good, and the overall results turned out well. But is that enough?

How can we avoid decision fatigue? David Draney has a few ideas:

• Make big decisions earlier in the day. Have your meetings early in the morning instead of last thing in the afternoon.

• Make fewer decisions. Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck, jeans, and tennis shoes almost every day. It was one less decision he had to make.

• Make decisions only when you are well-rested. When you are not well rested, defer the decision to the next day.

Now, this last point is a slippery slope. When decisiveness is a leadership trait, when does decision deferral become paralysis? Because Analysis Paralysis is when the fear of making a bad decision outweighs the realistic expectation or potential value of success in a decision made in a timely manner.

This imbalance results in suppressed decision-making, rendering one unable to come to a conclusion or course of action and ultimately in an unconscious effort to preserve existing options.

Is there an option to only make good decisions 100% of the time? Probably not, though increasing the share way beyond 50% is achieved by finding a balance:

• Make fewer decisions by empowering those around you.

• Always preserve enough mental energy to evaluate whether a decision deferral becomes a bad decision in itself.

• And then, decisively and intently defer or decide.

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David Draney – How to Avoid Decision Fatigue

Photo by Anne Gosewehr