Overcoming Decision Fatigue:
Strategies for Business Owners

Finally owning the business I'd been managing went from feeling like I had things locked down to feeling like I’d been thrown from a moving ship into a bottomless ocean in the middle of a hurricane.

I'd done great as a manager. The store was thriving. And with a hands-off owner, I'd been largely responsible for the business strategy already. I thought at first that business ownership would be mostly the same as what I'd already been doing.

So imagine my surprise when I realized that I and my business partners had not only full control, but full responsibility. It called all of my decision-making practices into question, cut my confidence in half, and put me in unfamiliar territory where I had to scramble to figure out what to do next.

While running the business was still familiar, the wave of new tasks and responsibilities caught me off guard. Besides that, it's different making decisions for your own business than working in someone else's business. It's higher stakes.

I went through several phases as I rebuilt my confidence and got used to the new workload and responsiblity. I’m here now to help you shortcut that learning curve, so you can start making better decisions today.

There were three big realizations I had in getting used to owning a business this year:

1. Don't overthink it. Think less to achieve more.
2. Big decisions demand deep thought. It’s okay to overthink sometimes.
3. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

That might sound a bit silly for now, but go with it. I promise I’ll explain in due time. I discovered each of those three points, in order, over the past 8 months as I learned to steer the business better and navigated my new 3-person partnership owner dynamic.

Think Less to Achieve More

When I first became a business owner, I was worried about messing something up. So, to compensate, I took a ton of time on every decision and labored over each fork in the road because I wanted to feel like I was doing the right thing.

At times that was correct, and we’ll get to that shortly, but a lot of the time it wasn’t.

Do you ever feel like, looking back, you spent way too long to make a choice that ended up being pretty meaningless?

That’s how I felt a lot.

I’d spend hours making a decision, feel good about my choice for a minute, and then after another minute realize that choice was gone to time. After all that agony, it had barely any effect on the business at all.

I realized over time that most decisions weren't dire.

There are two types of people when it comes to decision-making (and you can be a bit of both):

• Maximizers, who try to weigh every possibility and make the best decision.
• Satisficers, who find the first decision that looks good enough and take it.

It may be unsurprising to find out Satisficers are, on average, much happier people.

Turns out I'm more of a Maximizer. It also turns out that spending hours and hours on every little decision is exhausting and bad for your mental health. I went through that during the first couple months of 2024.

So, to combat the inherent worry as a business owner that making the wrong decision could have awful, terrible, really bad results, we have to try to lean further into being a Satisficer. At least when it comes to smaller decisions.

Think of it this way. Is this decision business critical? That is, does this decision change the shape or path of the business forever? Is it irreversible?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, then you can probably save yourself some pain and make a quicker decision without overthinking it.

Big Decisions Demand Deep Thought

What if you said yes to some of those questions, though?

What if it is business critical, or changes the path of your business, or can never be reversed? Well, then yes, you should take your time.

If you’re considering a major pivot from a product to a subscription model, from one audience to another, or entirely redefining your company structure, maybe don’t make that decision overnight. The same goes for picking new manufacturers or locking yourself into anything else that comes with a contract and strict requirements.

If a lot of money’s involved then that’s doubly true.

After learning to relax this year, I got hit with a few large decisions that the business had to navigate, and I realized that relying on intuition alone wasn’t going to get me through to the other side.

Instead, we’d have meetings where all 3 of us would attend and weigh our options. We looked into data, sales trends, local demographics, city planning, and more.

We learned to lean on data and analysis to make sure our intuition was backed up by numbers, and even further to make sure we could try our best to understand the possible outcomes.

This is where it pays off to think like a Maximizer.

Find all the reasonable options you can. If you’re considering a big decision, first define what’s important to you. Set the criteria. What is your budget? What’s your biggest concern (convenience, comprehensiveness, quality)?

That helps narrow the scope of your question so you don’t get totally buried in options.

Next, gather up all the reasonable options that fit the criteria you’ve chosen. From there you can start to compare them to one another.

Is one a significantly better deal? Or has better customer service? Is one a long-time successful company you can depend on being around for a while? Is one a small startup that’s super scrappy and willing to try things you really like that others won't?

Maximizing a choice is great in times like these, because it lets you really dig into the meat of the question until you feel like you have a strong understanding of the situation and the possible next steps.

Realizing when to take my time helped me navigate some major product releases, find a new bank, and negotiate our lease and plan out where our business would be for the next few years.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

That said, I overcorrected when I realized that sometimes my natural habit to Maximize decisions was correct.

I was so excited, because in my personal life I’m so, so guilty of taking a long time on decisions even when I really don’t need to.

For example, I spent 2 weeks looking through electric kettles to pick a new one for my apartment. That’s absurd. Even worse, I ended up buying the first one I'd seen anyway (it's an absolute dream though, to be fair).

So my final realization this year was to not sweat the small stuff.

Sometimes you need to take your time on decisions, but sometimes you really don’t, and that’s okay!

Picking a new internet provider for the business doesn’t need to be a long process. It’s already a pain in the ass dealing with the internet we already have, and if I don’t like the one we’re trying I can switch to the next. Realistically, they’re all going to be mediocre and kind of annoying.

So that needs to be a quick decision. 30 minutes or less. Because I have other, bigger decisions to make that do actually need my time.

If my first realization was learning to make quick decisions, and my second realization was learning to sometimes dig really deep into decisions, then my third realization was understanding just how few decisions really deserve the stress I give them.

The reality is, 80% of the decisions we make from day to day as business owners don’t have a big impact. If you have a certain goal, and you’re moving in the direction of that goal, you’ll naturally make a good enough choice. Satisfice your way through.

These decisions aren’t where we make or break our businesses.

Instead, save all that time and effort for the last 20% of the choices. The ones that lead to 80% of the outcomes for your business. The ones that really matter and shape your future.