Episode 117: Decision Fatigue: Recognizing It, Managing It, and Moving On

Welcome back, Badasses! In this episode, we’re diving deep into something we’ve all felt at one point or another: decision fatigue. You know, that overwhelming feeling when even the smallest choices feel like they’re draining every ounce of your energy. Yep, we’ve been there too.

We talk about why decision fatigue happens, how it sneaks into every corner of our lives, and—most importantly—what we can do about it. From batching errands (because let’s be honest, who wants to put on pants more than once a day?) to simplifying the way we approach daily tasks, we’re sharing the real-life strategies that help us keep our sanity.

We also chat about how setting boundaries, delegating tasks, and scheduling rest can make a world of difference. Spoiler: disconnecting isn’t just nice—it’s necessary. Oh, and if you’re struggling with indecision, we’ve got a tried-and-true trick involving your gut instincts. Trust us, it’s a game-changer.

Let’s be real: decision fatigue is part of life. But with a little awareness and a lot of action, we can take back control and make decisions that align with our goals (and our sanity).

So, what about you? Are you feeling the effects of decision fatigue? What’s working for you to overcome it? Let us know in the comments—we’d love to hear your stories and tips!

Until next time, get after it!

Decision Fatigue: Recognizing It, Managing It, and Moving On

Don’t miss out—hit subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode!

Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube or Spotify and leave us a review!

  • Like the show? LEAVE US A REVIEW wherever you listen!
  • Have a question? CONTACT US at info@thepursuitofbadasserie.com!
  • Want to sponsor us? Find out how HERE.

Read the full transcript of this episode below:

 

Lynn Howard

Hey, I’m Lynn.

The Pursuit of Badasserie (Amanda Furgiuele)

And I’m Amanda. Welcome to the pursuit of badasserie. The podcast. Let’s talk about something that I am sure every entrepreneur faces.

Probably daily, yearly. That is decision fatigue. We have a million one. How is it in petroleum decisions to make over the course of any given day?

And some days it’s just too much. Let’s talk about it.

Lynn Howard

Yes. So I think that there’s a couple of different almost like faces to decision fatigue. You can have it.

where it’s situational. You can have it. So it’s just like in the moment you’re feeling overwhelmed or whatever. But I definitely want to talk to the, especially the ladies.

know men have it too, but the ladies who are like, maybe around our age that are just over making all the decisions.

Like they’re just tired of all the responsibilities of making everything flow. And you’re just, you, you, you, you just don’t want to do it anymore.

You’re tired of the one holding it all together, driving the ship. And everybody else is just kind of a passenger on your life, in your life.

And it’s, you know what, we set it up ourselves. We train others how to treat us. So when we’re, when we’re the ones always making the decisions, always making sure everything’s done, that we can find ourselves in a particular.

situation where we’re just exhausted, we’re tired. We’re tired of making the choices. tired of being the end to the end.

We’re tired of it.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

Absolutely, and it trickles down in so many ways, and I definitely feel like the work decisions are plentiful, but then life decisions as well, it’s a combination of all the decisions you have to make out for any part of the day.

And by the end of the day, can’t decide what to have for dinner because you’ve already made 67,000 decisions that day.

So it really, there are so many reasons why you might find yourself in this decision fatigue. And there are some days it just doesn’t bother you.

In other days, it hits you super hard. And again, as was saying, that could be situational, that could just be straw that broke the camel’s back.

But, you know, I also want to talk about about what we can do about it, because we don’t want to just want to sit in all the decision fatigue that we have.

I think it’s important also to talk about how we can get out of it and I think for me, one of the best things that I learned to start getting out of decision fatigue was with the Eisenhower matrix.

I know we’ve talked about the Eisenhower matrix before, but it is a tool that we use to help make decisions and make them more efficient and I definitely feel that when I have decision fatigue and I can’t, everything just seems to be hitting me hard and nothing seems to want to have a decision made that I will often fall back to basic productivity tools to help me get out of it so that I can move forward, make the decision and move on in my life with whatever I’m stuck with.

So if you’re not familiar with the Eisenhower matrix, it basically rates your tasks between urgent and important or not urgent and not important and it can really help you prioritize and choose what to tackle even if you’re done.

tackling all the things, so many things, all the time.

Lynn Howard

I love the practical tools, but I will say it starts with If your head is in your and your plane victim, then it’s going to be hard for you to get a decision fatigue.

Absolutely. Eisenhower Matrix is great. Delegation, learning to delegate. But I would say, besides where’s your mindset? Are you continuing to continue this decision fatigue?

It’s also building boundaries. Know as a complete sentence. You’ve heard us say it 100 million times. Know as a complete sentence and really not taking responsibility for other people’s stuff and learning boundaries to protect your own time, your own energy, your own sanity.

And it is starting small, like understanding that you have decision fatigue, and it’s funny to is when we decided to do this.

I’m thinking of like all these videos on social media about women dating and how they want a man, a man to make the decisions, man like, and these hyper hyper-independent, highly achieved women who are like, no, I can be submissive if I have somebody who can hold the space in order to allow that to happen.

I think that’s also like, know, that’s part of the mindset, but also the boundaries is like, don’t let these people around you, either be weak men or business associates or kids or whatever it is, suck your time and energy, like, start to create those boundaries and use the word no as a complete sentence.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

Yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned the dating aspect of it, because I was just talking with someone today about that dynamic, and absolutely that if you want to get personal, if I get asked on a date and they ask me to plan it, the dates are already over.

don’t want to plan one more thing, I don’t want to plan one more thing, and it’s part of that decision fatigue, but I mean, at that point, there’s so many decisions I have to make, and I get that both genders or I get, everybody has to make decisions in your life, but from an entrepreneurial standpoint, we have a lot of extra decisions to make, even more so than you make in just a, I’m not trying to poo poo nine to five jobs, but there’s a different system of, to say everywhere you have to make, that’s on you versus someone who has a nine to five, and yeah.

So it’s just different, I’m not poo pooing that scenario, it’s just, there are a lot of more decisions. is deciding on who gets to keep their job, deciding on what vendors to use, deciding on, mean literally I could go on for a very long time of all the random decisions you make over the course of the day.

But boundaries is a huge one, your mindset is a huge one, just get, I love it, you just kept it real and just get your hat out of your .

You have to understand that that’s what’s happening and kind of own up to your side of it because it’s very easy to sit in it and be sad that you have so many decisions, be sad that you can’t make a decision.

I have dealt with that quite a bit this last two months of just that limbo period and then you can, it can even force you into perfectionism again and there’s all sorts of things that can come from that if you sit in that too long.

So definitely set up some boundaries system, set of automation, set of things if you can get rid of some of your decisions.

The better if there’s things that you every time like you know at three o’clock You’ve got the the mail comes and you gotta pick up a package like automate that get them to get us somebody who picks it up for you Go, you know, whatever it is you need to do to try to systemize or autumn autumn Automate they’re looking for automate friends are hard Automate whatever you can because that’s gonna also take away some of that decision or if you can come up with sop’s around specific things like you know if If some emails me about this this is the response that I have a canned email that goes out if somebody has a question It’s creating your fhq’s on your website.

If someone has a question about our hours of operation, we’ll send them this link So it just becomes very streamlined.

So you’re not Deciding what bits and pieces to send somebody if x happens than y is the result of that or even creating Boundaries in your business of what you will and will not do like I will not answer the phone after 9 p.m.

I will not answer on before 6 a.m. that whatever your boundary is but setting that up will help create so you’re not going to have to make decisions between nine and six because you’ve already set up a boundary that those are kind of your cutoffs.

Lynn Howard

Yeah I love that you said automate and simplify too is that again usually with decision fatigue it’s not just about the business it’s about life like life is laughing so can you meal prep can you only shop one day like how can you automate and simplify things throughout your whole life it’s not just about your business but baby steps are important I think the other thing too is we can get into this like over-complicating things or over analyzing so almost like picking your battles like at the end of the day some decisions don’t have to be so complicated like just do it move on right some things you need a little bit more maybe thought to it or process to it.

But when you become, when a lot of times when people become decision fatigued, they can react in two big ways.

head in the sand and allow kind of like the ostrich in the sand. The other one is like just things become have to become a bit more complicated because we get into the weeds.

And that Amanda kind of touched on it, that could be a little bit of the perfectionism that could be in the bit of like you’re losing control and like this is your only way to have control.

But either one is not necessarily a good thing to do. Like acknowledge, move on, acknowledge, move on. And I know it’s easier said than done.

And it’s funny because I go back to, because I’ve definitely gotten to decision fatigue and I definitely feel it a lot.

But when I was moving, when I was moving, and I remember like going through like letting go of everything.

in my house when I decided to go international. I remember having a conversation with a girlfriend. I was actually in Bogota, and we’re having a coaching call because we were both in a program, ICF program to learn coaching.

And I was like, okay, this is the way I’m gonna do it. X, Y, Z. And like, essentially I went to each room and I touched something one time and it either got donated, kept or given away.

Like I had this process help me like run through it. So that way with all of the other decisions I was making, going international, my kids were moving out of the nest, like all these other things that were in my control that I was making decisions on.

And also dealing with life and emotions and all of the businesses. I was also selling a business at the time.

was also stepping into a COO role that I was able to hyper-focus in on having a really clear system that helped me.

We go through a big house with two decades worth of, you know, stuff from raising kids, not maybe not quite two decades, but a decade and a half of stuff of raising kids and like go through it.

And so I think, you know, it’s just so important to not get lost in the weeds as much as possible.

can help with that. Calling yourself out can help with that. Eisenhower Eisenhower matrix can definitely help with that. I think having a buddy or like some kind of like support system can definitely help with that.

Having conversations around it. I think it’s a bit taboo, especially for type A, women especially have, I think there’s a little bit of taboo of having conversations around it.

And also an internal conflict. I mean, we talked about dating and it’s funny because I know women who want the men to make

decision, but that they don’t give the men the capacity to make that decision. And so are you actually setting that up for success or are you continuing to have that that play out, right?

And so there’s a lot of internal stuff that needs to be kind of checked, but also then your actions and reactions as well.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

100%. There’s so much more to it than we’re even letting ourselves realize. And it’s all very fixable if we let ourselves do it.

You just got to sort of get over the stress of it and the control of it and all the things that are contributing.

And like we said, simplify, systemize, automate, batch your information, like batch your, your, like not just work related. I’ve talked about productivity, but it’s not just work, it’s like, I mean, I don’t go on a different errand every single day.

I run all my errands at once. So only have to leave the house once. to put on pants once, we patch those things as much as you can and set those boundaries, delegate what you can, get rid of things, and ultimately small actions can also help with that.

decisions, you’re never going to not have a decision to make. mean, even if you want to give yourself like a decision-free zone, like these three hours, I don’t have to make decision, you had to decide to have that.

So there’s going to always be decisions that you have to make. You can’t escape them, but you can make them more manageable.

You can overcome certain blocks you have around those decisions. And there will be decisions. I’m sure this is no shocker.

Some decisions are easier than others. And even if they’re an easy decision, it doesn’t mean it’s an easy to execute the decision.

You know, that’s how we’re going to stay in long relationships longer than we should, just because we know we need to get out of it, doesn’t mean.

And that could not just not just not just social relationships, but business relationships and vendor relationships or family relationships, all sorts of things can come up with that.

You stay in it longer than you want to because you’re avoiding the decision and just because you’ve decided that that’s what’s gonna happen is it made that the action that the follow through is going to be quick either.

So, and that also contributes to decision fatigue because until you’ve actually done the deciding and you’ve actually gone through the action, it’s still there in your head and it’s still part of your decision to fatigue because if you haven’t finished the action, it’s still in the decision mode because you can still undecide.

Lynn Howard

What’s that? Yeah. agree, you know, when you were talking, I had this vision of being behind somebody at like Starbucks and they are, how many times have you been to Starbucks?

Like you should know the menu by now, like don’t complicate stuff. What are you in the mood for? You had the idea that you were gonna come to Starbucks now.

I do. Some people might not know what they want might want to be inspired, but that’s also like just that like processing that overcomplicating of things can just add add to the stressor.

And we literally just have this conversation with our group of entrepreneurs as well. I think one other thing that we didn’t mention that I think is really important is scheduling disconnect and rest.

And you kind of you started to talk about like the decision to disconnect. But it is important to have that in your schedule.

So that way you’re not making decisions. You’re you’re resting, you’re recharging, you’re allowing your brain to like kind of just calm down.

That could be anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks, depending on the intensity of your how you are.

But that when you come back from that rest, it’s important for you to come back like clear mind and fresh versus diving right back.

into the the whatever the energy that all the decision making holds for you. 100%. Yeah. So to have the decision to teach, we want to hear in the comments, what’s worked for you, what’s helping, are you acknowledging it and what are you doing to not have it because it has to start with you.

It’s not going to start from anybody else.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

So it has to start with you. And I want to give one last tip on decision fatigue. This is the tip that was given to me from handed down from generations of well, if you can’t make a decision, you should like, let’s say you can’t decide what you want for dinner and like, okay, burger or pizza, pick one arbitrarily, and then how does your body feel right after?

Do you feel like, ah, a little bit of regret, like, then you know you should have gone with pizza and then you make that decision moving on.

But if you like, yeah, that’s good. Burger fat sounds great. Then that was a direct decision. Even if pizza also sounds good.

go with your gut instinct on it if you make a decision and if it before you’ve actually executed see how that feels in your body and if it feels wrong then it is.

Like the other one. So yeah, feel it.

Lynn Howard

That is a good one. All right, so do you have diffusion, diffusion, fatigue fatigue and how are you navigating it?

There’s many other points that we cover but we want to keep this close, close, short and concise because yeah, it sucks.

It sucks to have division and actually manifest in so many different ways not just you feeling overwhelmed. There are so many different things that can happen when you’re in decision fatigue.

I think it’s time to call it now.

The Pursuit of Badasserie

All right, let us know in the comments. How is your decision fatigue going? Have you ever experienced it. If you haven’t, I want to know your secret.

Please teach me your way. And until next time, get after it.