Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Decision Fatigue or Decision Strengthening

Heard another pearl from Jocko Willink this week.

There are tons of blogs and talks out there talking about decision fatigue.  The idea being that as the day wears on, each decision takes a little more out of us, until in the evening we go nuts on eating candy and cake.

That has some consonance with my experience.  At the very least, we make worse decisions when we are tired.

But in his latest Tim Ferriss podcast, in the context of talking about why you should get up at 4am, he makes a claim for the exact opposite.  That is, he claims that each good decision, such as to wake up, to work out, makes good decisions easier later, so you wont eat that doughnut in the break room at 10am or 2pm or 8pm.  Is good decision making like a muscle?

Looking at my own experience, this seems to be true too.  But how can both things be true?  Decision fatigue or decision momentum?