Decision fatigue
Overview
Decision fatigue is the effect in which making decision after decision wears down your mental energy and lowers the quality of your judgment. It became widely known through research by Roy Baumeister. It rests on the idea that willpower is a limited resource that runs down as you use it.
A famous study, reported in a 2011 paper, analyzed parole hearings in Israel. Right after a session of hearings began, the chance of parole being granted was about 65%, but it fell to almost 0% as the hearings went on, then recovered to about 65% after a meal break. This is interpreted as the judges' decision-making ability wearing out and tilting them toward the safe choice that takes no risk (denial).
Question boxes and decision fatigue
The person answering in a question box makes several decisions for each question. Should I answer this one? If so, in what tone? How far should I go? How much of my real feelings should I show? With 10 questions, that adds up to dozens of decisions.
As decision fatigue builds up, two patterns tend to appear. One is "ignoring everything." You run out of energy to decide, open your question box, and close it without answering anything. The other is "sloppy answers." You get by with short replies without thinking deeply. What both have in common is that you answered the first few questions carefully, but the quality drops the further you go.
How to deal with decision fatigue
The first thing that helps prevent decision fatigue is to reduce the number of decisions. In running a question box, that means setting rules in advance. "Answer at most 5 a day," "Always skip questions about X," "Decide on questions that arrive late at night the next morning." With rules in place, you have to decide from scratch less often.
The other way is to open your question box at the time of day when your judgment is sharpest. If your judgment is sharper in the morning, do it in the morning; if you're a night owl, do it at night. Opening your question box when you're tired is like making important decisions while in a state of decision fatigue. Paying attention to when you open your question box can change the quality of your answers.