This 1 Thing May Be Wearing Parents Out Everywhere

It starts before the baby is even born: Where will you give birth? Who will be in attendance? Bottle or breast? Co-sleeper or crib? The choices you have to make accumulate, forming a huge, intimidating snowball that threatens to flatten you. The potential consequences of each decision weigh heavily, as they are no longer simply about your own preferences, but your child’s future.

The average person makes more than 35,000 decisions each day, Dr. Lisa MacLean, chief wellness officer at Henry Ford Health in Michigan, told HuffPost. “And each decision — no matter how small — requires time and energy,” she said.

If you find yourself so overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices you have to make on a given day that you feel unable to make even one more decision, you may be experiencing what is known as “decision fatigue” ― though it can be tricky to separate this phenomenon from the general stress of parenting.

Here is what you need to know about decision fatigue, and some tips on how to minimize its impact in your life.

How does “decision fatigue” happen?

Studies have shown that people’s capacity to make thoughtful decisions diminishes as the day wears on. A 2011 study involving an Israeli parole board found that board members were more likely to grant parole requests in the morning, and after breaks for food. The theory is that people’s minds expend energy, like a muscle, when they make decisions, and that after a lot of decisions, an exhausted mind works less effectively. In the case of the parole board members, when they were hungry or tired, they seemed to skew toward the “safe,” or default choice of keeping the prisoners incarcerated.

“Decision fatigue occurs when decision making becomes increasingly difficult,”