The Hidden Cost of Decision Fatigue

Besides being the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs was famous for wearing his iconic outfit every day: a black turtleneck and jeans. While it may seem odd for someone to wear the exact same look every day, akin to a uniform, Jobs described his stylistic choice as a solution to not wasting his mental energy on what to wear.

The Decision Dilemma

While wearing the exact same clothes every day may be a bit extreme, Jobs brought up a valid point. Every decision we make, no matter how small, affects our ability to make the next one. If you’re an overthinker like me, even deciding what to eat every day takes up a lot of mental energy. Even if you’re not an overthinker, every decision adds up, and with hundreds of them to make each day, it’s easy to get tired quickly. This phenomenon is known as decision fatigue, and it quietly affects our productivity, judgment, and clarity.

Researchers have shown this effect clearly in one of the most cited studies about decision fatigue. Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso (2011), in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed over 1,000 parole decisions made by judges. They found that the likelihood of granting parole was significantly higher at the beginning of the day or after breaks, and much lower towards the end of the day. The researchers attributed this pattern to decision fatigue, where judges, after making numerous decisions, tend to favor the status quo—in this case, denying parole.

Of course, not everyone works in a courtroom, but the modern-day workspace has small decisions that also compound quickly. Think of the hundreds of emails, calendar invites, and other constant information that is being fed to your brain. By the time a significant deliverable or decision comes up during the workday, your brain is already exhausted.

Lost In Busy Work

Being busy can feel safe. Taking the time out of your day to answer twenty emails feels like a doable task that you can check off. Writing drafts and sending them out feels like progress during back-to-back meetings. However, these are the small tasks that exert our energy; we should be conserving it for the more difficult ones. People typically check their email and calendars at the beginning of their day, yet research shows that this is when our brains perform at their peak.

A study published in Psychologica Belgica examined the time-of-day effects on attention and memory efficiency. The researchers found that participants exhibited greater efficiency in cognitive tasks during the morning compared to the afternoon, highlighting the brain's heightened performance earlier in the day. Why should people waste their peak brain performance on mundane tasks?

How Productivity Tools Can Help

That’s where April AI can help. April is a voice-powered AI executive assistant that helps busy professionals achieve inbox zero and master their calendar—completely hands-free. Just speak naturally, and April will summarize long email threads, flag urgent messages, reply for you in your voice, reschedule meetings, and prep you before calls. April learns your executive style so that you can finally stop wasting time and energy on smaller tasks. By protecting your mental energy, you’ll have the bandwidth to make clear, important choices. Clear thinking compounds—and it can start in an instant.

If you find yourself in a rut, try one hour in the morning without checking your inbox, Slack, Google Calendar, or anything else. Let April handle the small tasks while you direct your flow state and deep thought into something more rejuvenating. Whether it’s for personal growth or a deliverable you’ve been procrastinating on, use this one hour to recharge your brain.

The hidden cost of decision fatigue isn’t just small mistakes—it’s the time lost that could have been spent on greater opportunities. You don’t have to wear a black turtleneck and jeans every day, but you could start by using April each morning.