I am tired.
That’s probably an oversimplification of where my headspace is these days, but it’s the most honest place to start.
Since May, I’ve traveled at least every other week. The reasons have varied, from work obligations to personal plans, and the trips themselves have ranged from genuinely fun to just plain annoying. Regardless of why I’m going, each one takes time and energy before I ever leave the house.
Before this post takes a turn, I want to be very clear that I’m okay. Mental health is so important and often overlooked, but this girl’s serotonin levels are doing just fine.
My brain just feels crowded.
This current season of life is showing me how real decision fatigue can be and how many decisions we’re expected to make in our twenties.
The Kind of Tired Sleep Doesn’t Fix
Physical tiredness usually has an obvious answer. A long night of sleep or a quiet Sunday can make life feel manageable again.
Decision fatigue is harder to identify because it doesn’t always feel like exhaustion. For me, it often appears in small moments, like staring at a menu and realizing I truly don’t care what I order. The choice itself is easy, but my brain has lost the energy required to make it.
Travel has made that feeling especially obvious. Every trip creates a new collection of logistics to manage before I can focus on the reason I’m going in the first place. Even the things I’m genuinely excited about require planning.
Fun still takes work.
By the time someone asks what I want for dinner, I’ve often used every ounce of decision-making ability I had available that day. I don’t want to compare two restaurants or study another menu. I want someone else to choose, tell me where to be and let that be the end of it.
Everything Is a Choice Now
One of the worst parts of being in your twenties is realizing how many decisions you have to make, and how many you feel the need to make before you hit thirty. Adulthood arrives and hands you unlimited options with very little guidance.
Suddenly, you’re expected to decide:
- Where you want to live
- What kind of career you want
- How you should manage your money
- If, when or whether you want children
- Which relationships deserve more of your energy
- What kind of life you’re actually trying to build
Those larger questions sit on top of dozens of smaller decisions that still have to be made every day. None of them exists in isolation, and very few come with a clearly correct answer.
Having choices is a privilege. I know that. But privilege and pressure can exist at the same time.
The Pressure to Choose Correctly
The tiring part isn’t only the number of decisions. It’s the pressure to make the right one every time.
We’re constantly encouraged to optimize our lives, as though there’s one perfect combination of career, relationships, finances and personal habits waiting to be discovered. If we research enough and plan carefully enough, we’re told we can somehow avoid regret altogether.
That pressure can make even a temporary choice feel permanent. A new job starts to carry the weight of your entire career trajectory before you’ve even figured out how to schedule a Zoom meeting.
We’re making choices for people we haven’t become yet and trying to predict what those future versions of us will want.
Of course that’s exhausting.
Even the Good Things Take Something From You
Part of my current fatigue comes from the fact that many of the things filling my calendar are good things.
They’re opportunities I’m grateful for, work that matters to me and moments I want to experience with people I love. The full calendar is, in many ways, one I actively chose and genuinely appreciate.
It still wears me out.
As much as I wish it did, gratitude doesn’t create additional capacity. Being excited about a trip doesn’t make the planning disappear, and wanting to be somewhere doesn’t mean you won’t long for your own bed by the end of it.
We tend to believe we’re only allowed to feel tired when something is going badly. A calendar full of happy things is supposed to make us endlessly enthusiastic, but good things still ask something of us.
I am very much still learning that acknowledging that doesn’t make me ungrateful – it makes me honest.
Why Small Choices Start to Feel So Big
I’ve wondered lately whether I’m becoming more indecisive, but that doesn’t feel quite right.
Most of the time, I’m perfectly capable of making the choice. I’ve just already made so many by the time I reach the smaller personal ones that I no longer have the energy to weigh another set of options.
At that point, I don’t want more autonomy. I want relief. I want a default that allows an unimportant decision to remain unimportant.
Part of the problem may be how much meaning we attach to our choices. A quiet weekend at home can somehow turn into a larger question about whether we’re wasting our youth (I question I juggle frequently). The decision stops being about what we need that weekend and starts feeling like evidence of the kind of person we’re becoming.
That’s far too much weight for most choices to carry.
A decision shouldn’t and doesn’t have to become a lifelong contract. We can choose based on what works now and reconsider when our circumstances or priorities change.
There’s freedom in allowing a decision to be temporary, imperfect or simply sufficient.
Learning to Make Life Smaller
I don’t think the answer to decision fatigue is creating the perfect system for making decisions. That sounds like one more thing to research, build and maintain.
For me, the answer may be making life smaller for a while.
That means allowing more repetition and resisting the urge to reconsider choices I’ve already made. The familiar meal, the reliable outfit and the plan that worked last time don’t need to be reinvented simply because another option exists.
The Edit: Make Fewer Decisions
Decision fatigue doesn’t always require a dramatic reset. Sometimes, it just requires removing a few choices from the day.
- Create defaults: Choose a few reliable options and stop asking yourself to reconsider them every time.
- Stop optimizing everything: The most strategic choice on paper won’t always be the one that works best for your actual life.
- Let “good enough” be enough: Not every decision deserves extensive research or a detailed comparison.
- Ask for help choosing: Let someone else make the plan or narrow the options when your brain has reached its limit.
- Remember that most choices aren’t permanent: You’re allowed to decide based on what works now and change course later.
I’m still tired. I still have trips on the calendar, messages that need responses and decisions waiting to be made. But I’m trying to stop treating each one like a referendum on the life I’m building.
Maybe that’s the real edit for this season: recognizing how few of these decisions actually need to be perfect.
