Choice and Decision fatigue

I think we have at one time or another experienced choice fatigue and decision fatigue.

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Maybe it was your first time at Starbucks?

Half and half, decaf, semi-skimmed, soy, coffee faff.

Don't worry we all held up the queue the first time we went too.

Mr CSW thought he was going on a carefree vacation when we did a driving trip circling America;

 until we had to order breakfasts.

In the UK, the land of the supposed eccentrics,

 choice applies to voting, how you dress and how you take your tea. ( Mind you even then, your birth has a lot to do with it but that's another post.)  

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Otherwise, you eat what you are given.

Now for those living in North America, 

this is au fait for you but not for the rest of the world.

So at our first breakfast across the pond when he ordered sausages and eggs on toast, he was asked naturally,

 "How would you like your eggs?"

* He looked to me for assurance even though he was the one eating them so I looked down at the menu as I like to see him squirm *

Fried?  He questioned her back.

Without skipping a beat, she reeled off, 
"Sunny side up, both sides, runny or well done in the middle?"

He answered but took more than the 

customary polite time allocated to respond.

Just when he thought it was all over, 

"What kind of toast would you like?"

"Just whatever comes."

"Whole wheat, white, wonder bread, 7 grain, whole grain, 

sour dough, bagel, muffin?

Mr CSW's
expression.

I saw his brain start throbbing and it took a good week before he could order a la Americain.

I am also currently being inundated with numerous choices to make and am feeling very similar.

Now real life choosing isn't like dreaming up your list of things to do and buy if you won the lottery.  

My head is in such a state and I have been so physically tired of late through the sheer amount of choosing at hand.

I was curious to see if this was just psychosomatic or if choosing was burning up extra glucose in the brain. 

Through the Kavli foundation that studies the brain and the science of choice, it has been confirmed that my cortexes are indeed on overdrive.

As L'oreal would say - Here's the science bit.

Research is revealing how neurons code the value of different options 

when people make decisions.

 These MRIs show brain areas whose activities increased according to how much human subjects valued the option they chose between two different alternatives researchers presented to them. (Credit: Daeyeol Lee)

Choice / decision fatigue is a valid medical condition.

( Please click on the link if you want to read more about it - this NY Times article is rather interesting.)

But don't tell the National Health Service just yet.

Nowadays, we are in the age where not so much your physical things but your choices seem to have so much gravitas.  

Every decision seems so pivotal. 

 It's like one's everyday is the real life version of those books we all read in childhood where you chose which door to go into.

One door lead to an oasis and the other one always lead to a goblin!

I was thinking that one of the main reasons that I choose the

 Mayr Clinic in Austria as a holiday choice over the conventional destinations in the Med is partly because of the lack of choice.

The luxury there isn't the injections nor the medical care but actually it is the very liberating condition of everything having been chosen for you.  You just have to turn up and half the job is done.  

All I gotta do is chew.

I think that is the reason why so many politicians also frequent the Mayr.  So much time and energy is saved by freeing up the brain to compute other things.

But for those who don't have the time nor inclination to read the article, I leave you with this quick important synopsis.

Without getting all socio-political and this is just sharing remember...

There are studies that demonstrate the reason why people in poverty tend to make bad financial decisions is due to sheer fatigue and worry depleting a proper strong mental base to calculate.

But this also affects those of all socio-economic groups.

Making choices wears down your mental fortitude that after a session of intense decision making, your defenses are down and you acquiesce and agree to things you might not have done before the brainstorm.   So for instance, what color lipstick, what material coat, what leather seat in your car are little tricks to weaken your core mental strength.

A lot of marketing depends on this very foil.

Which explains why I would never have let my builder choose my bathroom wares a few months ago but now if you see pictures of my bathroom in a future post, 

any credit or critique should be aimed at him!

PS I thought I was going to make this a no comment post so all you busy people could just read and go on your daily routine once in a while but I messed up and while I was looking for the removal of comments as this is my first time, I got rid of Lee Sinden's comments. Sorry Lee, I will do it next time but before I hit publish!