What Decision Fatigue Feels Like

Have you ever heard of the story of the donkey that starved to death while simultaneously dying of thirst? 

The tale goes: A completely rational donkey stands exactly halfway between a stack of hay and a bucket of water but starves and dehydrates to death because it cannot find a logical reason to choose one over the other. 

Now, thankfully, most of us aren't going to literally starve because we can't decide between two options.

But we can get mentally exhausted from making hundreds of tiny decisions every day (do I need to answer this email? how do I respond to this text? when am I going to workout? etc.)

Add in a mountain of daily "shoulds" (drink lemon water, hit 10k steps, meal prep, go to bed early), and suddenly you're standing at the bottom of a steep path wondering: What am I supposed to do first?

We don't always need to get better at making decisions (although maybe we need that too) - we need to get better at spotting which ones are draining us.

Ask yourself today:

• Which choices are actually necessary?

• Which "shoulds" are on auto-pilot?

• Where can you set a default rule and just stop overthinking?