Behaviouronomics: Decision Fatigue

We make hundreds of decision every day, most of which are trivial but end up taxing our mental resources, the so called willpower. And it’s dangerous to make critical decisions when the limited stock of willpower is running low.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, recently became father to a baby girl. So after two months of paternity leave, when he returned to work he asked his followers, showing off his wardrobe, for a suggestion about what he should be wearing to office. This is how his wardrobe looks.

Pretty drab collection, isn’t it? Zuckerberg has been wearing the same outfit, a grey t-shirt, for many years. For that matter even Steve Jobs mostly wore a black turtleneck. So why do these billionaires, who could afford to buy almost anything in this planet, choose to stick to a simple attire?

The answer is – It’s their hack to simplify life.

According to Zuckerberg, making clothing decisions each day was a “frivolous” waste of time. He says “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how best to serve this community.”

It’s estimated that in an average day, you will make somewhere around 35,000 decisions. Many of them are unconscious like walking, blinking and don’t require any mental effort. But the sheer volume of even those decisions that require at least some mental effort like what to wear, where to eat, how to get to work, who to call when you get there, is staggering.

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