Overcoming decision fatigue
I haven’t solved decision making but I have learnt a few methods to make my decision making more efficient.
Not knowing when or how to make decisions can be tough, it can lead to a decision fatigue that ultimately leads to bad decision making. Knowing when and how to make decisions as a designer is a different beast all together. There are constraints that feel like oxymorons, there is a responsiblity to find the balance between organisations and consumers and there is even an untold impact of your decision, that you won’t know until the product is released into the wild.
It does not help that we literally make hundreds of sub conscious decisions all day, everyday — from choosing what to wear in the morning to picking a new feature for a product. Each and every one of these decisions have a dramatic impact on the quality of the next and it’s something that people are not aware of. It’s something I was not aware of until I started to reflect on my own decisions.
Some decisions are trivial, some are not but each of these decisions contributes to a decision fatigue. Think of decision making as a muscle, the more you times flex it the harder it gets.
Now, as a design intern, decision making is interesting and it’s something I get to experience from both ends. The first is watching and learning, the second is getting to make decisions myself. Through these experiences and the advice I recieved I started to reflect on my decision making and the way I approach it in more ways than just design.
I mean, it was no surprise that when I started to record and reflect how I made decisions I was being really inefficient. I had small decisions littered throughout my day, distracting me from the more important decisions that I should of been making at another time all together.
Anyone familair with design sprints will be familar with how decision making is optimised. Conversation is cut out, the mantle of “together alone” is adopted and used in a series of group sticker votes and small conversations moderated by a decision maker and facilitator. These types of decision making methods frame problems or decisions into more tangible questions that are easier to judge when next to each other.
These methods fascinate me and I figured it would be a great place to start when looking at how I could avoid my day to day decision fatigue. How I may block my decision making into certain times or even just how I consider the way in which I make decisions by myself. Here are some of the ideas I have learned behind my decision making now.
I haven’t solved decision making but I have learnt a few methods to make my decision making more efficient and effective. Here are a few of them:
- Chunking activities depending on the time of day — decisions that require more ‘brain power’ are usually planned and made during work hours after breaks or food whereas smaller decisions can be made in the evening.
- Framing decisions as How Might We’s or Wouldn’t Have To phrases makes them more comparable and hence easier to decide.
- Ensuring external or smaller decisions are not littering my time for bigger decisions. I.e, planning my day the night before or keep a backlog of them to get back to after the more important task.
Thanks for reading— I’m currently a user experience intern at Bosch Power Tools and an Industrial Design student at Loughborough University. Feel free to get in touch or check out my website.
