How Decision Fatigue Is Causing Smart Leaders To Struggle

Most people don’t fail because they aim too high. They fail because they never decide.

At first glance, that sounds like a courage problem. In reality, it’s usually an energy problem.

And while poor sleep and bad diets definitely contribute, there's another sleeping giant of a problem impacting leaders at every level: decision fatigue.

The Real Reason Leaders Struggle To Decide

Every day, leaders are asked to decide hundreds—sometimes thousands—of things. Most of them feel small. Harmless. Not a big deal.

What to respond to first with 100 emails in your inbox by 8am. 
What meeting to attend when you're double and triple booked.
What notification to check across the multiple platforms.
What article to skim to pretend like you're investing in knowledge.
What ideas to park for later and which ones need to be acted on.

Individually, none of these decisions break us. Collectively, they drain us.

Marketing research estimates we’re exposed to 5,000+ ads per day. The average executive gets 117 emails daily. Then, stack dozens of Slack messages, Team pings, and text messages on top of this. Each one is a micro-request for attention.

Even when you ignore them, your brain still processes them. That cognitive load adds up long before you get to the decisions that actually matter.

And here’s where it gets dangerous.

The iPhone Problem

Your brain is like an iPhone with 137 apps open… and you’re wondering why the battery dies by noon.

You don’t need a better charger.
You need to close some apps.

Most leaders don’t lack ambition or intelligence. They lack available bandwidth. Their mental energy is being siphoned off by constant inputs, context switching, and low-stakes decisions that never should have made it onto their plate in the first place.

How Decision Fatigue Shows Up In Real Life

In personal life, it looks like this:

• You’re exhausted before the day really starts
• Simple choices feel heavier than they should
• You default to comfort, convenience, or avoidance

Not because you’re lazy… but because your brain is already spent.

That spills straight into work.

In professional life, decision fatigue shows up as:

• Overthinking instead of executing
• Endless planning with little progress
• Avoiding hard conversations
• Being “busy” but not effective

You’re not stuck, you’re depleted.

Mental energy is real energy

There’s a well-known example from competitive chess: elite players have been observed burning thousands of calories per day during high-stakes tournament matches due to sustained mental stress, elevated heart rate, and cognitive load.

To put that into perspective, running on a treadmill for an hour will usually burn about 750 calories.

So what does that have to do with running a business and managing teams? To make this important point.

Intense thinking is physiologically expensive.

Leadership decisions pull from the same energy reserves. If those reserves are already drained by noise, distractions, and unnecessary choices, clarity becomes nearly impossible.

We can't pretend anymore that "mental energy" is some ethereal thing that doesn't really affect us because clearly, it does.

The Hidden Drains Most Leaders Miss

The biggest culprits aren’t the obvious ones. Here's a few mental energy vampires that go hidden in the shadows.

Context switching - Jumping from email to Slack to meetings to metrics to texts fractures attention and forces constant mental resets.

Unfiltered inputs - Open tabs, endless feeds, background noise that are all competing for priority in your mind.

Choice overload - Too many options without clear filters leads to hesitation, delay, and exhaustion.

None of these feel dramatic and that’s why they’re so damn dangerous.

The Solution Is Subtraction

You don’t solve decision fatigue by pushing harder. You solve it by removing friction.

When you subtract:

• unnecessary inputs
• repeat decisions
• constant interruptions

You multiply:

• clarity
• follow-through
• results that actually matter

This is why most people don’t fail because they aim too high. They fail because their best decisions never get made while their energy is still intact.

Here's two ninja-level moves you can use...

1. Eliminate forced decisions
   If something repeats, decide it once and lock it in. What you wear. When you check email. How meetings get scheduled. Every repeat decision you automate or remove gives energy back to the decisions that actually move the needle.

2. Cut inputs before adding effort
   If your brain is tired, don’t push harder… remove noise. Take 30 minutes to DELETE things cluttering your mental space. Unsubscribe. Silence notifications. Shrink your information diet. Clarity doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from having less competing for attention.

Subtract first. Then multiply what actually matters.