It starts before the baby is even born: Where will you give birth? Who will be in attendance? Bottle or breast? Co-sleeper or crib? The choices accumulate, forming a huge, intimidating snowball that threatens to flatten you. Each decision carries weight, as it now affects not just your own preferences but your child's future. The average person makes more than 35,000 decisions each day, according to Dr. Lisa MacLean, chief wellness officer at Henry Ford Health in Michigan. "And each decision — no matter how small — requires time and energy," she explained.
If you find yourself so overwhelmed by the sheer number of daily choices that you feel unable to make even one more, you may be experiencing "decision fatigue." However, this phenomenon can be tricky to separate from the general stress of parenting. Here is what you need to know about decision fatigue and how to minimize its impact.
How Does Decision Fatigue Happen?
Studies show that people's capacity to make thoughtful decisions diminishes as the day progresses. A 2011 study of an Israeli parole board found that members were more likely to grant parole in the morning and after food breaks. The theory is that decision-making expends mental energy like a muscle, and after many decisions, an exhausted mind works less effectively. When hungry or tired, the parole board members tended to choose the "safe" default of keeping prisoners incarcerated. "Decision fatigue occurs when decision making becomes increasingly difficult," MacLean said. "Essentially you make so many decisions that you become drained."
The result can be an inability to decide — decision or choice "paralysis." People may defer to a default option, make impulsive choices, procrastinate, or avoid deciding altogether, MacLean noted.
How Do Parents Experience Decision Fatigue?
If you're stumped by what to make for dinner, decision fatigue might be to blame. "Just think about the number of decisions a parent makes in the morning alone before their children go to school. They then work all day — both within and often outside the home — and then pivot back to trying to effectively parent after a full day's work," MacLean said, noting that single parents may face multiplied stress. "You might notice that your own tank is on E before your kids even get home from school," she added.
However, the stress may not be solely due to the quantity of decisions. "While I believe that the mind can fatigue, I don't think this is always due to the specific number of choices made or the specific time of day," said Eva M. Krockow, professor of psychology at the University of Leicester in the U.K. Other factors, like conflicting information from internet forums and social media, also complicate decision-making. "When it comes to parenting, there are lots of different sources of information out there... It's a hugely complex cognitive task to make sense of all this information and reach decisions around parenting styles, school choices or even food choices," Krockow explained. Given these challenges, it's not surprising for parents to feel overwhelmed and paralyzed.
In other words, if you're struggling with a choice, it may be due to the number of decisions already made that day — or it might simply be a tricky decision. No amount of minimizing choices will help when all childcare options are too expensive, for example.
What Can You Do to Minimize Decision Fatigue?
You can't always make parenting easier, but you can give your brain a break by limiting daily choices or scheduling them strategically. Here are suggestions from Krockow and MacLean:
- Set up routines. "Creating routines will allow you to move throughout your day without having to think about a decision," MacLean said. Wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, and go to bed at the same time each day.
- Make big decisions at your best time. Since decision-making capacity wanes, most people should tackle big decisions in the morning. But some may be too tired then; find your personal peak. "It's important to understand personal decision tendencies and realize when one's own willpower is at its lowest," Krockow said.
- Use a decision-making strategy. "One common heuristic would be to rely on 'social feedback' or reputation," Krockow explained. For choosing a school, rely on trusted parents' opinions rather than online rankings. Simplify by focusing on key criteria instead of weighing many pros and cons.
- Limit the number of choices. For kids, offer limited options like "cereal or a bagel?" instead of open-ended questions. Apply the same to yourself. MacLean recalled giving her son salami and cheese for lunch every day in high school: "It made it easier for me and cut down on the number of decisions I had to make."
- Plan in advance. Use grocery lists, weekly meal plans, and involve kids in laying out clothes or packing lunches the night before.
- Delegate when possible. In MacLean's family, her husband and children make dinner one night per week. "Thursday is my day off from making dinner. They can make anything and I don't complain. We eat pizza a lot on Thursdays, but it is so freeing to think to myself, 'It's Thursday, I don't have to decide what to make for dinner.'"
- Don't neglect self-care. Fatigue makes decisions harder. "Get enough sleep, avoid skipping meals, get sunshine, move your body, use social media in a thoughtful but limited way," MacLean advised.
- Go easy on yourself. Parenting is hard, and not everything can be fixed with a hack. "One of the best things we can do is give ourselves — and others — the benefit of the doubt," MacLean said. "We're doing the best we can, and we can't ask for much more. Take a deep breath when you need it. Recognize you don't have all the answers."
