The older I get, the more I suffer from decision fatigue. Decision fatigue is defined as “a state of mental exhaustion that occurs after making numerous decisions, leading to a decline in the quality of subsequent decisions.”
Some things are a little bit fun to pick out like paint colors or presents. I mean, assuming you like to give presents. I just feel that I wasn’t warned that we would be doing this all the time, forever.
There are so MANY decisions. Most of them, fortunately, are not earth shattering, but they need to be made nonetheless. Decisions such as what to have for dinner every single night for the last 40 years are tedious. No one warns you about that when you’re a child wanting so badly to grow up. For someone who LOVES to eat, I sure hate to THINK about what I am going to eat.
When I was a child, this is not how I pictured adulthood. I knew what my choices were going to be. It was obvious. Cookies and candy for dinner, perhaps with an ice cream chaser — for dairy. Duh. Activity-wise I was going to watch “Scooby Doo” 24 hours a day, seven days a week, naturally. This was a lofty goal considering I was watching “Scooby Doo” in the 1970s before VCR recordings and streaming on demand were mainstays.
I hadn’t worked out the kinks yet, but I just knew I was gonna have Scooby all the time. Also, no bedtime. Zero bedtime. I probably wouldn’t sleep at all. Total waste of time.
Choice
Now I sit down with a remote in my hand and I have approximately 28,000 programs to choose from available to me at the flick of a button. Naturally, I end up watching the Dog TV channel where birds and squirrels frolic on the screen on a loop to amuse my dogs.
It’s somehow easier than making a decision about any other programming. I don’t know if I want to commit to a new series that might get canceled. Then again some of the award-winners are a half dozen or more seasons long. I’ve had relationships that didn’t last as long as it would take to slog through “Grey’s Anatomy.”
I enjoy research. Need to buy something big? Don’t threaten me with a good time. It’s my nature as a writer to want to delve into all the facts and figures of a thing, to see all sides of a situation before taking a stance, to check out all the reviews. At the end of it all, the answer is often very clear: “I still don’t know.” I think sometimes I just want to put off making a decision until I have a good reason not to make any decision at all.
The decision fatigue isn’t about life choices, such as choosing who to marry, what schools to attend or even what career to follow. Certainly those decisions take some time to think about, but it makes sense they should take time. It’s the tedium of the everyday on repeat that gets me: What to wear? What to do? When to make phone calls, appointments, commitments?
In most things, we could certainly make a decision, but it’s so much more relaxing to keep mulling over all the options and not make any changes at all.
I really do miss when most of my decisions were made by someone else. My mother. My grandparents. That perennial favorite: the Magic 8 Ball. Those were basically the childhood version of a psychic hotline in our ‘70s and ‘80s childhoods.The Magic 8 Ball contains a 20-sided die with 10 positive answers, five negative answers and five vague responses such as “Concentrate and ask again” and “Reply hazy, try again.”
We spent HOURS as kids asking Magic 8 Ball questions and thrilling at the answers — or not.
That’s all fun, but I think I need an updated, more modern, version. The answers could be “It’s hard to say,” “Meh,” “That sounds awful” and “Tacos.”
