Business Insight Zone

Decisions, decisions . . .

“Modern Western society has two epidemics,” she said. “One is rampant self-control problems — over-eating, over-drinking, over-spending, sexual liaisons that ought not to happen. The other is rampant choice-making. I see these two as intimately related.”

“She,” in this case, is University of Minnesota researcher Kathleen Vohs, who has done extensive research on the way that people make decisions, and the toll that decision-making exacts on the human brain. I found out about her work — and found the quote above — in this article:

Being a Decider Takes Its Toll
New research suggests every choice made depletes our store of mental energy, lessening our ability to control impulses.

The conclusions in the article are startling:

“We have a model about self-control,” she explained. “Self-control is governed by what I call ’self-regulatory resources.’ “

These resources are finite, meaning every act of self-control draws down our supply, leaving us vulnerable to impulse behavior in other arenas.” Almost all of our previous research on this model has found that if you engage in self-control in one domain, you’ll have less self-control in another domain,” she said.

Well, okay, but surely this relates to weighty or stressful decisions, not the simple choices of everyday life. Right? . . . No.

“This pattern was found with assigned choices and spontaneously made choices,” the authors write. “It was found with inconsequential and more consequential choices.”

“The more choices we make, the more taxing it is,” Vohs concluded. “End of story.”

Wow, think of the business implications! How many decisions do YOU make each day? How many of them are actually consequential? And do you leave yourself enough energy to deal with the Big Decisions by giving little decisions the short shrift they deserve?

Wasting time staring at the menu.

An analogy occurs to me: Have you ever known someone for whom every single little decision was a potential pitfall? The sort of person who spends five minutes dithering out loud with the waiter while everyone else at the table is waiting to order? To me, Vohs’s research is a clear indicator that people who fall into that trap are doing themselves a major disservice. We’d be better served to make as few choices as possible in minor things, so we can save our precious cognitive energy for other choices — or other acts of self-control — that really matter.

I used to be one of those who pored over the menu, thinking that the best way to order was to read everything, then rationally narrow down my choices until I came to the one-and-only item that would most delight me. Upside: fairly good food choices (but only fairly good — not perfect). Downside: it turned into an ordeal that took forever.

At some point, many years ago now, I figured out that (a) I hated being the one at the table who took forever to order, and (b) I’d rather spend the time and thought in conversation with my dinner companions rather than worrying the menu to death. And so I started taking a much simpler approach: glance at the menu, find something likely, and then ask the server what they think. It’s still involves making a decision, but only *one*, rather than the long series of paired comparisons I used to make.

Keep it simple.

My own experience matches Vohs’s advice:

“Simplify. Try to make fewer decisions. Try to divorce yourself from the decision-making process.”

In part this means automating those parts of life that aren’t so important, the little choices that could bog us down every day, or could be handled as a matter of course. Vohs thinks — and I agree — that we should move more of the inconsequential matter of our lives into that category, to free up more mental energy for the big stuff.

[T]here is always the example of one of the greatest thinkers of all time, who — at least by some accounts — did not wish to waste a single brain cell pondering what to wear.

“Albert Einstein had only one suit,” Vohs said, “but he had it replicated 25 times.”

Why not keep this idea in mind throughout this week? Look at the decisions, big or small, you’re heaping onto your plate every day. How many of them are really important? How many of them could you safely punt? How can you set up better habits to free yourself from minutiae?

Your homework assignment . . .

. . . should you choose to accept it: Try to reduce the number of decisions you have to make throughout this week, then come back on Friday and tell me how it worked. I’ll do the same, and we can compare notes.

~

(Photo by Rustybuckets.)

Category: The business brain