Thriving in a World of Decision Fatigue

Modern leaders live in a constant state of decision-making. From strategic pivots to the daily grind of emails, meals, and meetings, each choice consumes energy. When too many choices pile up, there’s a depletion of mental resources, what psychologist call decision fatigue. Yet organizations demand decision velocity, the ability to move fast and act with conviction. The tension between when to slow down and when to speed up is one of the distinguishing features of leadership today.

Sebastian Page, the Chief Investment Officer at T. Rowe Price, with $1.7 trillion in assets under management, and author of The Psychology of Leadership, believes that psychology offers underused tools for navigating the decision dilemma. While psychology is often associated with clinical issues like depression or anxiety, Page draws on psychology’s positive side, its powerful body of research on thriving, engagement, and ultra-high performance. He believes it’s time to move this science from the lab into the boardroom.

Sébastien Page - author of The Psychology of Leadership

Source: Sébastien Page/ Used with permission

The stakes could not be higher. Surveys consistently show that more than half of employees in the U.S. are disengaged from their work—leading to lost productivity, low morale, and costly turnover. Leaders themselves often feel the weight of decision-making, which not only harms their organizations but also leads to burnout.

One of the first obstacles leaders face is the sheer volume of decisions, many of them trivial but which nevertheless drain energy. What shirt to put on, what to eat for lunch, whether to exercise—each of these small moments chips away at mental stamina. A mind cluttered with low-stakes choices has less capacity for the decisions that truly matter. Page sees a way forward through positive psychology—by focusing on well-being, meaning, and long-term thriving. Leaders who bring these principles into their daily practices can improve both their own performance and the engagement of their teams

For more than 10 years, Page has exercised every single day, eliminating the daily negotiation of “should I or shouldn’t I?” He eats the same salad for lunch and keeps a closet full of nearly identical shirts, blue and white, with dark suits ready for any professional occasion. His habits might sound extreme, but by conserving mental energy on small matters, he’s free to focus on the choices that really count.

It is a strategy that took President Obama through eight high-pressure years at the While House. “You have to exercise,” the ex-president told Vanity Fair magazine. “Or at some point you’ll just break down. You also need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day. You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

The potential for flourishing that Page wants to deliver to organizations and leaders runs up against another barrier: the culture’s obsession with short-term thinking. Despite Stephen Covey’s famous advice to “begin with the end in mind,” too often, he says, leaders focus narrowly on immediate outcomes while neglecting the longer-term arc of thriving. Without such perspective, organizations fall prey to the sunk-cost fallacy, continuing projects that should be abandoned. Or they pivot too quickly when early results disappoint. Thinking long-term brings perspective, reminding us that flourishing involves more than just day-to-day emotions. It includes engagement, meaningful relationships, purpose, and accomplishment over years, not days.

The big challenge for leaders is to know when to move quickly and when to wait, when to engage decision velocity vs strategic patience. The choice is not a simple either-or. The necessary skill lies in filtering decisions. Some choices—urgent crises, competitive opportunities, genuine survival moments—demand fast, decisive action. Others require thoughtful deliberation or time for events to unfold, all the while resisting emotional impulses.

Leaders can benefit by making such filtering a conscious act, developing the ability to recognize when a situation calls for urgency and when it invites patience. Without such awareness, the brain defaults to speed, often at the expense of wisdom. Even in his own leadership role, Page reports, colleagues often come to him expecting immediate conflict resolution. By pausing, resisting the reflexive urge to intervene, and allowing space, he avoids being trapped in cycles of reactivity that drain both him and the organization.

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Underlying all of these positive practices is a simple truth: Well-being fuels performance. It’s a good idea to often remind ourselves that the real foundation of success lies in diet, exercise, meditation, and sleep. Neglecting one weakens the others. These habits are not optional wellness add-ons but essential for resilience, sustainable performance, and life satisfaction. They are, quite literally, what make everything else possible.

Ultimately, leadership today requires more than strategy and execution. It demands the discipline to reduce decision fatigue, the perspective to think long-term, and the courage to bring meaning into everyday work. Leaders who practice these skills not only protect their own energy but also inspire greater engagement among their teams. As Page puts it, “We all need to learn to think longer term. It’s not just about day-to-day positive emotions—it’s about how we thrive over time.”

The shift from firefighting to flourishing may be the boldest and most necessary leadership move of all.