One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that people rarely come to me saying they have decision fatigue.
That is not how the conversation usually begins. People tell me they feel overwhelmed and cannot switch off. They feel mentally exhausted and wonder why everything suddenly feels harder than it used to. Sometimes they say something much simpler – “I don’t think I can make one more decision today.”
Because the decision itself is rarely the problem. It is everything that came before it.
What many people are experiencing has a name: decision fatigue. It’s a recognised psychological phenomenon where our mental energy gradually becomes depleted after making countless decisions throughout the day. Most people don’t realise they’re experiencing it until even the smallest decisions begin to feel overwhelming.
When even the smallest decisions feel overwhelming
Have you ever found yourself standing in the supermarket wondering why choosing something as simple as olive oil suddenly feels surprisingly difficult? Or staring at a restaurant menu for far longer than you should? Perhaps you’ve spent hours scrolling through holiday options until you feel too overwhelmed to book anything at all.
None of those decisions seem particularly important. Yet there are days when even the smallest choice feels exhausting.
In my experience, that is often because our minds have quietly become too full — not with one big problem, but with hundreds of small decisions accumulating throughout the day. Things like:
- Should I reply now or can this wait until tomorrow?
- What do I need to remember before the end of the day?
- Who still needs an answer from me?
- What have I forgotten?
Individually these questions seem insignificant. Collectively, they create a mental load that many of us barely notice until it begins affecting every part of our lives.
We often think we have a productivity problem
Most of the business owners and professionals I work with are organised, capable and incredibly committed to what they do. They are not struggling because they cannot manage their time.
They are struggling because they have spent the entire day making decisions for other people, including:
- Leading teams and supporting clients
- Managing family schedules and appointments
- Solving problems and holding everything together
- Planning ahead for everyone except themselves
By the time they finally sit down to decide what to cook for dinner or whether to book the holiday they have been talking about for months, their mental energy has already been spent.
On the surface it looks like poor productivity. The way I see it, it is often something much deeper. It is a mental load.
The invisible weight we carry
One of the reasons I find this so fascinating is that mental load is largely invisible. Nobody else sees the hundreds of tiny decisions we carry around in our heads every day — for example:
- The birthday you need to organise
- The meeting you need to prepare for
- The email you must not forget to send
- The parent you need to call
- The decision you have been postponing for weeks
None of those things seems particularly heavy on its own. Yet together they quietly occupy space that might otherwise be used for creativity, presence or simply enjoying life.
Over time we begin to mistake that constant mental activity for normal. We tell ourselves we are just busy. In reality, many of us are mentally overloaded.
I came to understand this in a very personal way
After losing my youngest son, I walked the Camino de Santiago, not looking for answers, but simply needing enough quiet to hear myself think again. Before we left, I planned every stage of the journey: every hotel, every transfer, every detail organised before we started walking.
A friend who travelled with me told me afterwards how much that had mattered. Because once we began, there was nothing left to manage. No decisions, no logistics, no mental list running quietly in the background. Just space.
That experience changed the way I thought about rest forever. I realised something I had understood professionally for many years but had never experienced quite so deeply, the mental load does not disappear simply because we take time off. Unless someone actively removes it, it travels with us. It joins us at breakfast, sits beside us on the beach and follows us into beautiful places.
That understanding eventually shaped not only my intentional travel work but also the way I coach. Because whether we are talking about work, holidays or everyday life, the conversation often comes back to the same thing – creating enough space to reconnect with ourselves.
Sometimes making fewer decisions is more powerful than making better ones
People often assume the answer is another productivity system – a better diary, a new app, a different way of organising their week. Those things can certainly help.
But over more than twenty years of working with business owners and professionals, I have found that the biggest shift often comes from making fewer unnecessary decisions in the first place. In practice, that might look like:
- Creating simple routines for everyday tasks so those choices make themselves
- Setting clearer boundaries around your time and energy
- Delegating decisions that genuinely do not need your attention
- Letting go of the pressure to optimise every single choice
- Giving yourself permission for good enough instead of perfect
None of these changes is dramatic on its own. Yet together they create something incredibly valuable – space.
And once we have that space, we don’t just make better decisions. We think more clearly, feel more present and begin to enjoy life again.
This is what the S.O.U.L.® System is really about
People often assume the S.O.U.L.® System is simply another productivity framework. I see it as something much bigger than that. It’s a philosophy for living, a way of helping people create more space for what matters most.
- Simplify – remove what no longer serves you and focus on what truly matters
- Organise – create structure around your priorities rather than your pressure
- Understand – see clearly what is really causing the overwhelm beneath the surface
- Leverage – use your time, energy and strengths in a smarter, more intentional way
The goal has never been to fit more into the day. It has always been to experience your days differently because a full calendar and a full life are not always the same thing.
A different question
When people tell me they want to become more productive, I often wonder if they are really asking for something else entirely. Perhaps they are looking for:
- More freedom and breathing space
- More presence with the people they love
- More enjoyment in their everyday life
- More time for their health and the things that matter
- More moments where life feels calm instead of constantly managed
Those are very different conversations from productivity.
So perhaps the question is not, “How can I make better decisions?” but, “What decisions am I still carrying that no longer need to belong to me?”
Because in my experience, that is often where the real transformation begins.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is decision fatigue?
A: Decision fatigue is the mental exhaustion that develops after making many decisions throughout the day. As your mental energy becomes depleted, even simple choices can begin to feel surprisingly difficult.
Q: What causes decision fatigue?
A: Decision fatigue is often caused by a combination of constant decision-making, mental load, information overload and the ongoing demands of work and family life.
Q: How can I reduce decision fatigue?
A: Reducing decision fatigue is often less about doing more and more about simplifying what demands your attention. Creating routines, reducing unnecessary choices, setting boundaries and making space for reflection can all help significantly.
Q: Is decision fatigue linked to burnout?
A: Yes. While they are different experiences, prolonged decision fatigue can contribute to stress, overwhelm and burnout if we do not create opportunities for genuine recovery, rest and mental space.
