The dark side of decision making
- valentinlouispro
- 26 nov. 2020
- 3 min de lecture
The trouble of the 21th century….
Have you ever felt bad because of of choices' overabundance ?
Have you ever felt uncomfortable because of decision making ?
Do you sometimes feel that you need real, dedicated and true moment of calmness?
Why globally more and more people are attracted by yoga/zen activities?
Is that a trend or a real illness from human kind?
Here is the sin of our times: Decision making.
The improvements enabled by technologies has lead us to an ultra-connected world, and on top of that an excessive demand for a response from our side. We became tied to technology.
All of our daily decisions take time and keep our minds under a constant flow of information through infinite reflexion.
We think but we never stop.
We are CONSTANLY appealed by ads, social networks, notifications, and even colleagues.
By promoting communication and connectivity, we just spread a continuous flow of information throughout the web, or in our “physical networks” (I mean relationships).
From our first idea waking up in our bed to the last thoughts before closing our eyes to reach Morpheus’ arms.
From the simplest tasks: What to wear? What to eat tonight? Which movie to watch? Which day to choose to go shopping? Which part of your body you will train today?
To more complex ones: How to handle the new issues in your service? How to organize the new team members? How to set-up the new organisational changes inside your company? How/ when to launch the new product? How to organize that new business trip?
On the one hand, such behaviour makes us able to be creative, to create more, to be productive and to propose new contents in the same time as developing ourselves….
On the other hand, this is a(n) (in)visible pain. I say that because I feel like this is right underneath us, we deal with it each day, which is clearly something on which we could act…. But in the end, we just finish taken around the same vicious circle. We sometimes lift-up the head but, eventually, it goes and we did not really move ahead.
DECISION FATIGUE
This “sin” as I entitled, it, is about “decision fatigue”. This notion has been studied by Dr. Roy Baumeister (a social psychologist), and before was highlighted by Freud. He dealt with it as “ego depletion” (depletion = running out) which was the idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used. He adds that:
“when the energy for mental activity is low, self-control is typically impaired […]”.
In other words, it means that each of us has a certain amount of willpower: using up energy to perform one task induces that we won’t be able to reiterate on the subsequent one.
Decision making involves "the transfer of energy". By definition, what leaves your body is no more recoverable. It means that you definitely loose that energy. And this is the issue ! Usually the decision we face have no real and significant impact on our lives, whereas they concern most of our times along the day. Isn’t it a waste? A full waste of time? Shouldn’t we keep it for more meaningful reflexions?
In fact, the joy that we could generate from those decisions is sometimes just hidden by the stress from that decision making proces. We loose the meaning of our actions while we increase the amount of bad decisions.
CONCLUSION
We need to find ways to reduce that amount of questions that we ask ourselves all day long. Setting-up new routines or makes things clearer in our lives can be a first step towards a less tiring mental state.
Minimalism, by focusing on what really matters can a first part of the answer. By chosing less, we also chose more. We chose on a better state of mind, we chose for more meaningful reflexions....
SOURCES
Thanks for reading :)
Valentin
The goal of this reflection is to free oneself from all mental burdens and to concentrate on the essential. 🙌