Practice Owners: Where is your decision fatigue coming from?
Where Is Your Decision Fatigue Coming From?
Decision fatigue isn’t always caused by simply making too many decisions.
Sometimes, when we feel mentally exhausted, reactive, distracted, or like we just can’t handle one more thing, the problem is the total load we’re carrying.
One helpful way to understand that load is to break it into four categories:
Cognitive Load
Too many decisions, problems, tasks, or pieces of information competing for your attention.
Emotional Load
Stress, conflict, worry, frustration, or the emotional weight of supporting and managing other people.
Physical Load
Lack of sleep, physical exhaustion, tension, hunger, or simply asking too much of your body without enough recovery.
Stimulation Load
The constant stream of notifications, conversations, noise, screens, interruptions, and other inputs demanding your attention.
And, of course, sometimes it’s all four.
Get More Specific Than “I’m Overwhelmed”
When we label everything as overwhelm, it can be difficult to know what to do about it.
Instead, ask:
What kind of load am I carrying right now?
Because the answer changes the solution. Cognitive overload might require better systems, delegation, or simply getting everything out of your head and onto paper. Emotional overload might require a boundary or a difficult conversation. Physical overload may require actual recovery. Stimulation overload might mean reducing the amount of input coming at you.
You don’t necessarily need to fix everything at once.
Start by identifying the load that is costing you the most capacity and ask:
What would make this 10% lighter?
Sometimes getting specific about what’s draining you is the first step toward getting some of your capacity back.
For help on how to find and then reduce the load you are experiencing, schedule a free call here or email me at enneagramreflections@gmail.com
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