At 4:37 PM on a Wednesday in 2011, an Israeli parole board made a startling discovery: the likelihood of a prisoner being granted parole depended less on their crime or rehabilitation – and more on when the judge last ate.

Researchers Danziger, Levav, and Avnaim-Pesso analysed 1,112 parole hearings and found approval rates dropped from 65% after breakfast to 0% just before lunch. After a meal, approvals spiked back up. The pattern repeated like clockwork.

This phenomenon wasn’t about justice – it was about decision fatigue, the deteriorating quality of choices made after prolonged mental exertion.

The cognitive cost of constant choices

Looking at the description of decision fatigue, research by Roy Baumeister’s team at Florida State University demonstrated that willpower acts like a muscle – it tires with use. After making many decisions, people:

• Become more likely to make impulsive choices.
• Default to the status quo.
• Avoid making decisions altogether.

In the workplace, this manifests in subtle but costly ways. A Cornell University study found employees waste 27 minutes daily just deliberating minor decisions like how to respond to emails or schedule meetings. That’s nearly three work weeks lost per employee each year.

How decision fatigue cripples organisational productivity

The innovation drain

When leaders experience decision fatigue, they become risk-averse. A Harvard Business Review analysis of Fortune 500 companies found decision fatigue contributed to 62% of stalled innovation projects. Exhausted executives defaulted to safe, familiar options rather than bold new directions.

The meeting paradox

Decision-fatigues teams spend more time in meetings but accomplish less. Research from the University of California shows that after 90 minutes of consecutive decision-making, meeting participants are:

• 42% less likely to contribute ideas.
• 28% more likely to agree with the last suggestion made.
• 63% more likely to defer decisions to another meeting.

The email quicksand

A 2022 Asana study of 10,000 knowledge workers found employees make about 150 micro-decisions daily just about email – what to open, when to respond, how to prioritise. This constant low-level decision-making leaves less mental energy for strategic work.

Organisational strategies for combating decision fatigue

Implement decision-free zones

Forward thinking businesses are creating protected time, for example:

• Atlassian’s “No Meeting Wednesdays”.
• Microsoft Japan’s “Focus Fridays”
• Basecamp’s “Library Hours” (silent work periods).

These policies reduce the cognitive load of constant context-switching.

Standardise routine choices

Take inspiration from leaders who minimise trivial decisions:

• Mark Zuckerberg’s gray t-shirt uniform.
• Barack Obama’s two-suit wardrobe.
• Steve Job’s iconic black turtlenecks.

In practice, we can apply this principle by:

• Creating email response templates.
• Standardising meeting lengths (e.g., all 25 or 50 minutes).
• Developing decision trees for common scenarios.

Optimise decision timing

Research from the Journal of Applied Psychology shows cognitive performance peaks 2-4 hours after waking. In practice, this would mean scheduling:

• Strategic decisions for mid-morning.
• Routine approvals for early afternoon.
• Low-stakes choices for end of day.

Individual defence tactics

The 5-5-5 Rule is a personal favourite when it comes to making decisions about anything in life for me. For any decision, I do this by asking:

• Will this matter in 5 days?
• 5 months?
• 5 years?

Once I have drawn a conclusion on the impact, I give full attention to what truly deserves it.

On the other hand, decision batching is another useful concept. We do this by grouping similar decisions to minimise context-switching costs. Elon Musk famously breaks his day into 5-minute blocks of similar tasks, and we can see how effective it is from his accomplishments in decision-making and corporate leadership.

Finally, it is worth noting that the brain burns glucose when making decisions. Stanford research shows that a 10-minute walk and protein-rich snack can restore decision-making stamina by up to 12%, which can be ideal for many situations in corporate leadership.

The bottom line

Decision fatigue isn’t personal weakness – it’s mere biology. The average knowledge worker makes about 35,000 conscious decisions daily. Organisations that recognise this invisible productivity tax and implement safeguards gain a significant competitive advantage.

As psychologist Barry Schwartz notes in The Paradox of Choice: “Learning to choose is hard. Learning choose well is harder, and learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.”

The solution therefore, isn’t working harder – it’s working smarter by designing workflows that respect our cognitive limits. Those who do will find their organisations making better decisions, innovating more consistently, and operating at peak productivity.