Too many options? The hidden fatigue of decision-making in daily life
An abundance of choice can impact our ability to decide and leads to mental fatigue and anxiety. Keep it simple
Last month, when I visited Kasauli for a literature festival, it brought back memories of childhood trips—annual visits to my maternal grandparents in Punjab and Chandigarh, when we would take a day’s picnic to Kasauli. What has stayed with me is the joy in the simplicity, of going back to the same places, of eating the same food, and of having limited choices. Visiting my grandmother’s house meant eating bun tikki, samosa and imarti and then running to the next-door store for Banta soda.
There was an ease to having fewer options, and it makes me think about whether an abundance of choices has come in the way of the lightness we experienced earlier. Now, a simple coffee outing with a friend feels unexpectedly complex—from choosing the milk to specifying how I like my brew. Clients and friends tell me how this has permeated every aspect of their life, whether it’s dating, ordering food or deciding what to watch.
Having too many options has impacted our ability to choose, our energy levels and our life satisfaction. There is an exhaustion I’m seeing in clients, which is linked to the process of making decisions for small, everyday tasks and it’s leaving them with limited energy for big life decisions.
We are living in a time when our social media feeds remind us constantly of what we should be buying, reading and paying attention to. There is an overwhelm and cognitive overload when human beings have to navigate and continuously make choices. This results in a desire to maximise and optimise every moment that is being experienced. It has trickled down to our daily tasks, in turn creating a pressure to evaluate and explore options.
As a result, we feel a certain fatigue that comes from being in “doing" mode all the time. Even simple pleasures like how to spend free time seems to carry the pressure of making a “good decision". All of this has led to increased anxiety, and makes the prospect of choosing is effortful. People experience an inability to make a choice.
We seem to forget that eliminating options and zeroing in on what we want demands cognitive resources, attention and a certain degree of self-control and clarity of thought. That’s why an abundance of options has the possibility of tiring us out and a greater possibility of post-decision regret. We all are guilty of thinking of “what if" scenarios and this thinking is amplified when one is choosing from a wide range of options.
In my work, I see that there is a need for perfectionism that has crept into our daily tasks and choices. Given that people spend enormous resources and time on decision-making about simple tasks, often they have higher expectations from these choices. When the outcome feels ordinary, people experience an expectation mismatch and feel dissatisfied.
Maybe this explains why at a buffet or a wedding, when we are surrounded with endless options of food, many often end up eating little. All that freedom to choose doesn’t satisfy us. We are left exhausted both visually and at a mental level by having to deliberate over what to do.
Therefore, when it comes to some life matters, we need to simplify, declutter and remember that less is more. Our ability to be present is enhanced in moments when we recognise that there is a price of exhaustion that we are pay when we are surrounded with abundant choices.
Maybe that’s why knowing what exactly to eat at your grandparents and the same picnic spot in Kasauli felt effortless and offered happiness and a quiet satisfaction that was deeply experienced.
Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist. She is the author of You Will be Alright: A Guide to Navigating Grief and has a YouTube channel, Mental Health with Sonali.
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