Death by a Thousand Tiny Decisions: How to Combat Decision Fatigue with a Virtual Assistant

Experts say we make up to 35,000 choices a day—and as a business owner, those decisions can pile up fast, leaving you feeling drained, scattered, and unable to focus on the big picture.

If you ever feel like you’re making decisions all day long, from the moment you get out of bed to the last email before sleep? You’re not alone.

I’m diving into the sneaky, exhausting culprit of decision fatigue, and exploring how it affects every part of your life and business and what you can do about it.

(Spoiler alert: Hire a good Virtual Assistant.)

First up… Why is decision fatigue bad for business?

1️⃣ Why Decision Fatigue Leads to Mistakes

After a morning of constant decision-making, before you can even get stuck into your normal work, even small decisions feel like heavy lifting… Queue the mistakes creeping in.

Client details slip, you say “yes” when you’d rather say “no,” and you end up reacting rather than planning. Decision fatigue leaves you scrambling and impacts your work, clients, and team.

2️⃣ Irritability – Your Mood Is in the Red Zone

Ever snap at a team member or give a hard eye-roll at an email notification?

Maybe someone on your team had the audacity to interrupt you on Slack and the ‘plink’ sound of yet another message sends you into a grumpy inner rage, when actually it was a genuine request for guidance that any other time - you’d be delighted to help them with. But instead they get a short, sharp answer and the vibe that you’re not happy and not approachable.

Decision fatigue can make you cranky and short-tempered, turning routine questions into irritations.

3️⃣ Procrastination at Home

After a long day of decisions, home can feel like another to-do list waiting to explode. From putting off calling the builder, to grabbing frozen food for the third night in a row… Decision fatigue spills into home life, leaving you feeling defeated and overwhelmed.

Instead of feeling recharged at home, you’re caught in a cycle of avoidance, unable to relax and sometimes a bit snappy with your loved ones, instead of happy and present because your brain is still overloaded from a day packed with decisions.

In the end, decision fatigue spills over into your home life, leaving you feeling stretched thin and feeling like it's a struggle to enjoy the downtime you need to recharge.

It’s a cycle that can be hard to break without finding ways to reduce the daily decision load and conserve that mental energy for what really matters.

Decision fatigue is robbing you of peace at home, it’s making you feel cranky and snappy with your team, and is leading to mistakes in your work.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. You can get relief from the relentless decision making…

Having a super experienced Virtual Assistant can literally change your work and home life for the better. All of our VAs love those tiny tasks, and getting to take those time consuming micro-decisions off your plate.

Imagine you hit snooze on your alarm, happy because you know you simply get to open your inbox with everything filtered, filed and actionable emails flagged by your VA.

The messages in LinkedIn with opportunities aren’t missed, they’re replied to and actioned, meetings you needed to move have been prioritised and shifted accordingly, calls booked and clients communicated with - no details missed, no client requests fall through the cracks.

Any decisions that can be handled on your behalf, have been sorted by your VA. You just asked, they fixed or figured it out, and you feel ten times calmer and clearer minded.

If you’re ready to combat decision fatigue and get more of your brain back as your business grows and you invest more in your family, then book a call, we’d love to help you.

🎙️ Wanna dive deeper into how to combat decision fatigue? Listen to my latest Delegate Like a CEO podcast episode, Death By A Thousand Tiny Decisions: How Decision Fatigue Is Keeping You Stuck in Your Business.