How to Combat Decision Fatigue at Work With Time Tracking

Do you ever feel like you’ve run a mental marathon by lunchtime?

Well, you’re certainly not alone. 

Having one too many work decisions to make can lead to mental and emotional exhaustion — or decision fatigue. We all know that physical fatigue can affect your performance, and the effect of decision fatigue is similar.

The good news? You’re not powerless against it.

There are effective ways to combat decision overload at work and one of the best strategies is very simple — tracking how you spend your time. 

Let’s dive into why decision fatigue happens and how time tracking can help you stay focused and more productive.

What is decision fatigue?

Decision fatigue is the state of mental overload due to the stress of making too many decisions.

According to the American Medical Association (AMA), a person who experiences decision fatigue may also have “brain fog” and feel anxious and stressed. And the more decisions are made during the day, the more decision fatigue symptoms worsen.

In other words, your brain is like a battery — and every time you have to make a decision, that battery gets drained a little. By the end of the workday, after making a ton of choices, you might find yourself feeling mentally exhausted and burnt out — that’s decision fatigue for you.

When you’re already suffering from overwhelming decision fatigue and stress, it’s only natural that both your mood and productivity drop. Soon, the effects of decision fatigue can creep in, such as:

• Procrastinating,
• Zoning out,
• Making poor choices, or
• Avoiding decisions completely.

Fortunately, once you recognize what causes your decision fatigue, you can do something to manage it properly.

Why do we face decision fatigue at work?

Your mental energy is most vulnerable at work since it’s the environment where you make the most accountable decisions. When you have to juggle different tasks, projects, meetings, emails, and deadlines, the stress of all those decisions builds up.

Accomplished serial entrepreneur Alex Adekola reveals that having to manage several projects at once is his biggest cause of decision overload:

“Decision fatigue hits me the hardest during times of high volume claims where multiple cases must be handled simultaneously. The need for constant attention and critical thinking when managing disputes to negotiating settlements does make decision fatigue commonplace.”

You may think that you’re only making time for really big decisions, thus saving yourself the trouble of considering every little thing for every project and task. But the truth is, our entire day is filled with a bunch of microchoices. 

By the time you sift through task prioritization and check your inbox, your energy levels are already depleted. However, important decisions like project deadlines and strategies are still waiting.

This is why decision fatigue is such a productivity killer at work — it sneaks up on you. You may not consciously notice the amount of decisions you have to make, but once it’s time for some big decision-making, you’re already tired.

The result? 

Aside from feeling the mental and emotional decision fatigue symptoms, your work can suffer, too, due to missed deadlines and poor choices.

Not all is lost, though. There’s a way out of this trap thanks to the efficiency and transparency of time tracking.

How to reduce decision fatigue with time tracking?

Tracking your time lets you see exactly where your time (and energy!) goes. This is ideal for recognizing patterns that might lead to decision fatigue. After all, one of the many benefits of time tracking is to reduce the number of decisions you have to make during the workday.

Look at your logged tasks and hours — you’re bound to notice at what points you were the most and least productive. You’ll see what tasks drained you more and what decisions you had to make at what point during your workday.

Once you have this kind of information, you can plan out your entire workday around the most important tasks — and your mental energy levels.

If you spend too much time on low-priority tasks, you can delegate decisions about them to your colleagues. Even better, you can employ some efficient time management strategies, such as time blocking, for some deep work. 

When you have specific time windows for truly big decisions and tune out the rest of the microchoices, you can avoid decision overload and improve mental clarity.

CEO of a company for virtual assistance, Nicole Magelssen, explains that time tracking and delegating tasks provided her with more time and mental energy:

“For several weeks, I logged every task I performed. Analyzing the data, I realized that a significant portion of my day was consumed by routine administrative tasks that didn’t require my specific expertise. Delegating these tasks not only improved my productivity but also reduced stress, allowing me to focus on high-level activities that drive business growth.” 

And the best part? Tools like Clockify make time tracking easier than ever.

Use Clockify to beat decision fatigue at work

Now that you know how time tracking can help you avoid decision fatigue, let’s talk about how to make it easy — that’s where Clockify comes in.

Clockify lets you see what you spend your time on and for how long. With this insight, you can learn what is draining your mental energy the fastest and decide how to organize your day around it. 

For example, you can schedule important decisions for the periods when you tend to feel the most productive but leave the more routine tasks for later.

Additionally, Clockify is a tool that provides you with everything you might need to manage your workload better. You can:

• Create time blocks for focused work,
• Limit the number of small decisions you make,
• Prioritize your tasks in a way that keeps decision fatigue at bay, and more.

Use the available data to schedule important decisions and get rid of distractions — all while reducing the mental toll that can lead to decision fatigue.