This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee and Kashish Khattar.
Hi,
What are you going to wear today? The white one or blue one?
What will you have for breakfast?
Should you make that call to your colleague now or after an hour?
Should you have a tough conversation with your junior or let it pass?
Should I leave office now or should I finish one more thing before I pack up for the day?
Should you study this or that?
Should I do this now or the other thing?
Should I raise my hand to speak or should I keep quiet?
You are making a lot of micro and macro decisions constantly, throughout your day. You really cannot proceed without making lots and lots of decisions every step of the way.
Did you know that by the time you go to bed every night, you have already taken around 35,000 decisions for the day?
35,000, give or take. Wow.
Do you know how much energy your brain burns to make these decisions? A lot.
Do you think you need to go to the gym to burn calories? Wrong.
You can burn calories sitting at a desk, by doing intense thinking. Even every decision you make burns some energy. Real calories. Your brain works hard for everything.
Let me give you some real numbers.
Over the course of an intense multi-day tournament, a chess grandmaster could burn up to 6,000 calories a day, as per Robert Sapolsky, Stanford professor of neurology and neurosurgery.
6000 calories. As much as an olympic champion swimmer burns after being in the pool for 6 hours.
How tired will you be if you were swimming for 6 hours? Can you imagine?
You are doing something quite similar when you are taking a lot of decisions throughout the day.
Exhausting, isn’t it?
I am often slow and can’t work fast enough beyond a point in the evening. I am sure you all have experienced the same thing. At some point, after doing intense work through the day, your brain feels like it is fried, and you cannot go on any longer.
Some of you may crave junk food in the evening. Your brain is asking for bad carbohydrates for a quick hit of glucose to the brain, so that it can replenish energy that is draining fast.
It is the same reason why people stress eat. As the brain is constantly thinking, it starts to ask for more food in anticipation of intense thinking ahead.
By this time I hope you have begun to realise that decision fatigue is a real thing.
The reason you can’t make very good decisions past 6:00 pm is because of a term called ‘Decision Fatigue’.
Simply put, decision fatigue is the decline of our ability to make the right decisions after a lengthy session of decision making throughout the day as our brain is stretched to its capacity and it needs some rest before it performs optimally again.
Basically, our capacity to make decisions is a finite resource. It needs to be managed and used for maximum outcome, because when we run out of it, we make bad decisions, or we simply stop being proactive or productive.
It is quite a revolutionary idea for most of us to think of our will power, ability to get work done, or mental capacity in this way.
If you keep the finiteness of this resource in mind, there are two things you will want to do:
- Want to increase the capacity of your brain to make hard decisions; and
- Preserve your decision making capacity for the major things in life and career, and stop using this power for making irrelevant and inconsequential decisions.
Basically, optimizing your decision making is a key skill of any successful person.
Why is it important
Because your success and accomplishments depend a great deal on this.
Imagine that you have spent most of your day making decisions and dealing with things that are not relaxing, but taxing your brain, and at the same time not related to your goals.
Then at the end of the day, with most of your decision making capacity spent, you sit down to work on your goal.
If this goes on for day after day, you are not going to go very far.
On the other hand, imagine that you wake up early, and the first thing you do is spend 2-3 hours on your goals first thing in the morning.
At this time, your brain may be at full power, with no lag or tiredness from making thousands of decisions already.
Do you think you may do better?
Also, after this, you will wonder as to how you can stay highly productive even late into the evening so that you can accomplish more.
Is there a solution for this?
Managing decision making bandwidth is therefore a critical aspect of successful self-management.
Understanding decision fatigue
Our brains tend to suffer from “mental fatigue,” just the way our bodies can become physically exhausted after a long workout.
This decision fatigue is what explains many rational people making irrational decisions.
No matter how mature or rational you are, you pay a biological price when you have spent a lot of energy making many many hard decisions.
You are not physically tired, it is just your brain that starts taking a toll.
What happens when you are acting under decision fatigue
- You operate out of your subconscious mind rather than making conscious decisions;
- Produce poor quality work;
- You make hasty decisions, take shortcuts, engage in reckless actions;
- Make poor decisions that you come to regret later;
- Look for ways to ease the mental pressure through an addiction or other methods; or
- Shut down altogether.
It affects many of us. We have to make many trade offs and make many tough choices throughout the day. If we put off self development, education, health, learning activities to the end of the day, we make it very unlikely that we will succeed in our endeavour.
The worst part about it is that most of us don’t realise how often it happens to us, or impact our decision-making process through a typical day.
Have you heard of how Obama, Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs (used to) wear the same clothes every day? Steve Jobs used to wear the same black turtleneck and blue jeans every day. Zuckerberg has his grey hoodie. All of Obama’s suits are the exact same colour.
Why do they do this?
These extraordinarily successful people understand the concept of decision fatigue. They work hard to avoid making unnecessary decisions. What to wear in the morning is a decision, and you should not be spending your precious brain capital on decisions like that. So they made one decision for once and all, and everyday follow that same decision.
There are other things you can do to limit the decisions you make in a day. For example, you may want to have a pre-fixed menu for food so that you are not trying to decide what you eat in every meal. It is a great idea to plan your day ahead of time, so that you are not again and again trying to decide what is priority right now, but merely following a decision that has already been made.
What else can you do to cut down unnecessary or inconsequential decisions from your life?
It will help you a great deal to focus all your energy on things that really matter.
Legal career and decision fatigue
A young lawyer can also feel this kind of pressure and fatigue very quickly. What to do in law school, how to proceed ahead? Is this the right way to go?
Should I moot all throughout law school? Should I play any sport?
Which law firm to work for? Which practice area? Which partner?
Which senior lawyer should I intern with?
Should I pursue masters?
Should I do an LLM? From India or abroad?
The questions are endless.
And you need to think about these things, surely. But the danger is thinking every day about these questions. You need to reach your answer, and then follow that decision through and through, rather than questioning yourself every day, or often, and spending your brain capital on assessing and reassessing your options rather than actually putting plans into action which finally moves the needle.
The same happens when you do not have a clear path or study plan.
Let’s say you are preparing for a judiciary exam. How much time are you spending collecting notes, finding study material, trying to figure out which book to read, which chapters to prioritise, how to figure out if you are on the right track etc., v. the time spent on actual learning that will be useful during the exam?
For a lot of people, they lose 50-90% of their time on paraphernalia and irrelevant decision making, and then they are too tired to study.
This is why a systematic study plan under the guidance of a coach who knows how to take you through different stages of developments really cut down on irrelevant activities and wastage of brain capacity, which is in turn preserved to focus on the activities that are critical and will produce results.
For difficult to achieve goals, you need to focus very sharply. You need to do only those things that move you forward, while you need to ignore everything else.
It is the same if you want to get a dream job that has eluded you so far or if you want quick promotions.
How much time you are spending wondering what to do and how to do v. actually doing it? This should give you a great idea about whether you are going to achieve that goal. Imagine receiving coaching from people who know exactly what you have to do, step-by-step, taking away your decision making heavy lifting and helping you to focus on only studying.
Will that increase your chances of making it?
This is where an organisation like LawSikho comes in the picture. We always operate from this principle, and make our students’ jobs very streamlined. Let us decide all the other stuff, you just focus on studying. We will give you all the material you need, you do not need to look around. We bring you every type of mentor you need, you do not have to run behind anyone. We bring you the exact task list we need you to follow through the day, so you are never wondering how you have to proceed next.
And if you follow our step-by-step blueprint, the rest is our responsibility. We will ensure you achieve your dream!
We even provide a money back guarantee for most of our courses.
Do you know of any other legal education organization or coaching that does this?
How to avoid the effects of such fatigue
In the digital age, information bombards you like a tsunami. From the time you wake up, notifications from email, social media, and chat channels and work are fighting for your attention. Without your awareness, your brain creates shortcuts to help you process this influx of information.
With all this information vying for your attention, you do not have the energy to make trade-offs. A mentally fatigued person is bound to make poor choices.
The best way to dodge decision fatigue is to minimise the number of decisions you need to make or to space them out strategically throughout your functioning day.
To succeed in your career, you need continuous work. Most people never put in that work simply because there are so many decisions to make all along the way.
What should I learn?
How will that help? Can I really get that result if I did this?
Who will show me if I am doing it right?
What should I read?
Will my senior help me? Why is he not giving me more opportunities?
It is a constant struggle. And it drains you. And in the end you do not end up making the progress that you could, because you are not taking enough actions.
For instance, the criminal drafting skill that most lawyers take 2-3 years to develop, we are able to teach that much in a few months. Why? Because it is a highly systematic, organized process, which does not depend on trial and error, and leaves nothing to chances.
We can do that same with your other career goals. Such as your next promotion. Doubling the revenue of your practice in the next 3 months. Getting a job in the law firm where you always wanted to get a job.
And a lot more.
How can we help
Want to have an amazing CV? Let’s work on it.
Let LawSikho help you with the plan. You put in the hard work. We will give you the exact roadmap so you do not have to find your own path. We will even guide you every step of the way.
Are you looking to build a network? LawSikho has a roadmap. We know where you will stumble, and we will prepare you for that.
Are you looking for exciting and challenging opportunities? You know who to contact. We are here to make it streamlined and easy for you to get those opportunities.
Here is an example:
LawSikho recently started doing a 2-day workshop where a considerable number of young lawyers and students come and understand a systematic approach to how to get their dream job in a BigLaw firm.
LawSikho is known for giving out incredible roadmaps to its learners. And that is step 1. Then we help you to execute that roadmap.
We can help you out in several ways, including:
Skill development
Learn the practical skills that you need for doing meticulous legal work successfully through courses like these:
- Diploma in Companies Act, Corporate Governance and SEBI Regulations;
- Diploma in Business Laws for In-House Counsels;
- Diploma in Industrial and Labour Laws;
- Diploma in Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Laws;
- Diploma in M&A, Institutional Finance and Investment Laws (PE & VC transactions);
- Diploma in Cyber Law, Fintech Regulations and Technology Contracts; and
- Diploma in Advanced Contract Drafting, Negotiation and Dispute Resolution.
CV building
We will help you to make a great CV, especially as you will write and publish articles while doing our courses. We have lots of free sessions on how to create a better CV, how to prepare for interviews, how to network, how to make your brand as a lawyer stronger and a bunch of other training sessions. For instance, here is a session when we talked about cyber law, technology law and career opportunities. By joining our courses, you get access to hundreds of such sessions.
Not only sessions, you will also get mentored by our placement team, who will personally guide you, one on one, to land the internships and jobs that you need.
Job and internship support
We will help you to connect with potential internship and job opportunities. If you do good work in our courses, we might even recommend you for suitable jobs.
In any case, our placement team will be there to help you with fixing your CV, working on your interview skills, preparing by practicing mock interviews, and connecting with opportunities. You will always have access to top notch career counselling. Every week, we are getting dozens of our students placed in internships and jobs, even in a difficult market.
Work resources
You will get access to a library of documents, templates, formats, checklists and how-to guides that would help you outperform others. We even help lawyers and law firms to rapidly expand their practices, as you can see here. Check out our library programs like Master Access, Corporate Law Library, and Litigation Library.
LawSikho has created a telegram group for exchanging legal knowledge, referrals and various opportunities. You can click on this link and join:
