Decisions, Decisions
Should I read this Substack? Yes please.
How many choices did you make before breakfast?
Not the big decisions. Not questions like “should I change careers?” or “is this relationship working?” I mean the small choices. What to wear? Should you check your phone? Which email to open first? Snooze or get up? Toast or cereal? Reply now or later? That notification—do you ignore it or tap it?
By the time most of us start our day, we’ve already made dozens of choices. Some researchers say the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions a day. That number is likely too high, since it comes from an opinion piece rather than a scientific study, and even lower estimates are surprising. One study estimates about 122 informed decisions per day. Cornell researchers found that we make over 200 decisions a day, just about food.
No matter what the real number is, it’s a lot. But has it always been this way?
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For most of human history, it wasn’t.
Our ancestors, hunter-gatherers with brains just like ours, lived in a world with far fewer choices. Their decisions weren’t easier or less important, but there were fewer of them, and they fell into narrower categories. Where to find water? When to move camp? How to respond to a predator? What to eat from what was available, which usually wasn’t forty-seven options in a brightly lit aisle.
Their decisions were high-stakes but low-volume, and almost always anchored in the physical, immediate world.
The brain we use in our offices, group chats, and endless social media feeds is the same one that evolved for that older way of life. It hasn’t changed in 12,000 years, but the world around us is now almost unrecognizable.
We’re using ancient hardware to run modern software, and it’s starting to overheat.
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Neuroscience provides a clear picture of what happens when the decision load becomes too heavy.
The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and self-control, is powerful but requires a lot of energy to use. Every decision uses some of that energy, and it’s not unlimited.
As we make more decisions, our dopamine levels drop. Dopamine is the chemical that drives motivation, reward, and our willingness to think hard. When it goes down, the brain looks for shortcuts or stops trying altogether.
At the same time, cortisol levels go up. A quick burst of cortisol can sharpen your focus, which is helpful if you’re avoiding danger. But when cortisol stays high from constant decision-making, it has the opposite effect. It makes the prefrontal cortex work worse, disrupts memory, and throws off your emotions.
When dopamine is low, and cortisol is high, the brain gets a clear message: save energy, avoid effort, and stay safe.
That signal feels like brain fog. Like flatness. Like being physically present but mentally somewhere else — or nowhere at all.
This isn’t laziness. It’s chemistry.
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There’s a well-known study, often cited and sometimes debated, about judges’ parole decisions. It’s memorable for a reason.
At the start of the day, they granted parole about 65% of the time. As the morning wore on and decisions stacked up, that number fell. By late morning, it dropped to nearly zero. After a meal break, it jumped straight back to 65%.
The facts of each case didn’t change. The judges did.
That’s decision fatigue at its clearest. It leads to a tough question: if even trained professionals making big decisions are affected by mental overload, what’s happening to the rest of us, quietly and invisibly, every day?
- Barry Schwartz called it the paradox of choice. More options don’t make us freer. They make us more anxious, more regretful, and less satisfied with whatever we eventually choose.
He described two types of people: satisfiers, who pick what’s good enough, and maximisers, who always look for the best option. Research shows that maximisers are less happy, more anxious, and more likely to second-guess themselves.
Modern life pushes us to become maximisers. Every app, algorithm, and product comparison site assumes we want more choices. But our brains actually need less, because that’s what they evolved for.
When we use up our mental energy on small choices, we have less left for what really matters. We’re less present, less patient, and less able to connect with others, because part of our mind is still busy with decisions we made hours ago. Too many decisions don’t just make us tired. They make us feel absent.
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This is where most articles on decision fatigue offer a tidy set of solutions. Simplify your wardrobe. Meal prep on Sundays. Automate your morning routine. Build a capsule wardrobe. Batch your emails.
And those strategies can help. They really can, for people who have the resources and stability to use them, and whose daily lives allow for these changes. But not everyone can put these solutions into practice. Here’s what that advice quietly assumes: that you have a wardrobe to curate. A kitchen to prep in. A morning that belongs to you. A job with enough flexibility to “batch” anything at all. These solutions are limited in reach, often excluding those without such privileges.
For people living under financial pressure, decision fatigue isn’t just about too many choices. It’s about too many impossible choices.
Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, in their landmark book Scarcity, showed that poverty itself taxes cognitive bandwidth in measurable, devastating ways. Simply raising financial concerns for people on low incomes eroded their cognitive performance more than being seriously sleep-deprived. In studies with farmers, cognitive function dropped significantly before harvest — when money was tight — and recovered after harvest, when it wasn’t. The difference was equivalent to a 9- to 10-point difference. That’s not a personal failing. That’s what happens when the brain is under constant stress - it is a brain under siege.
When you’re constantly deciding which bill to pay and which to let slide, whether you can afford the doctor or just hope it gets better, how to stretch a meal for one more day — those aren’t the kind of decisions a capsule wardrobe can offset.
Poverty doesn’t just add more decisions. It makes every single one heavier.
The mental strain of scarcity leads to what Mullainathan and Shafir call “tunnelling,” in which your focus narrows to the most urgent problem and everything else is pushed aside. Long-term planning, health choices, and even being emotionally present with your children all get crowded out. It’s not because you don’t care, but because your mental energy is already used up.
This changes how we see the issue. Decision fatigue isn’t just a productivity problem for busy professionals. It’s a bigger, structural problem. The people who have to make the most and hardest decisions are often those with the least support, the fewest safety nets, and the smallest margins for error.
And we wonder why they seem to make “bad choices.”
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So what do we do?
If you have the privilege to simplify your life, research shows it can help. Make important decisions in the morning, when your mind is sharpest. Turn small tasks into routines—not because routines are exciting, but because they free up your brain for what matters. Take real breaks, not just scrolling on your phone, but actual mental resets. Delegate tasks when possible. Try being a satisficer. Choosing “good enough” isn’t settling; it’s a proven way to support your wellbeing.
But the deeper answer isn’t individual. It’s systemic.
If we saw decision fatigue the way we see nutrition—as something that affects everyone but hits those with the fewest resources the hardest—we would design our systems differently.
We would make government forms simpler instead of adding more. We would cut down on paperwork for people who need help, rather than making them prove their need through endless steps and appointments. We would ask if our systems protect people’s mental energy or drain it.
We’d stop asking, “We would stop asking: “Why don’t they just make better choices?” and start asking, “What kind of decision environment have we created for them?” We haven’t changed in 12,000 years. But the number of demands we place on them has exploded.
The result isn’t just feeling tired. It’s a slow loss of what matters most—our attention, our presence, our ability to connect, think clearly, and respond to life rather than just react.
For some people, the answer is simpler mornings and fewer open tabs. For others, it’s about living in a world where survival doesn’t take so much mental effort.
Either way, the question is the same.
If we want to be more present—really present—we might need to start by making fewer decisions. Or at the very least, we should work toward a world that doesn’t demand so much from us. In the end, being present might be easier than we think if we start by lightening the load.
Or at the very least, by building a world that doesn’t ask so many of us.