5 ms·

Someone is probably going to quote that study where they say decision fatigue doesn't exist, and I'm going to head you off right now: It exists, everyone on HN

Someone is probably going to quote that study where they say decision fatigue doesn't exist, and I'm going to head you off right now: It exists, everyone on HN has experienced it, and one of the best tools a successful businessman has is being able to differentiate between which decisions actually need their input, and none of us use that tool enough. Case in point: it is 2 pm, I am on HN replying to this. Also, someone is going to probably recommend reading "Thinking Fast and Slow". It's not at the top of my list of books to read, but you should read it once just so you understand the references to it.

beefield 7y ago
Decision fatigue is one of those things I am inclined to agree with my confirmation bias and just disregard studies that claim it does not exist. It just makes a bit too much sense.
- hinkley 7y ago
  If someone got belligerent about it, I might allow that it's just plain fatigue. Being tired or worn out reduces our ability to function at a level we demand of ourselves or others, leading some people to some pretty bad issues they don't know how to handle. It can be vigilance (which for some of us includes deciding things), overstimulation (background noise), understimulation (loneliness, boredom), physical exhaustion, illness... any or all of these can induce us to make other sorts of highly suspect decisions, including how we spend our free time, money, or how we treat others.
criddell 7y ago
I think that study is about the existence of ego depletion (willpower is a limited resource).
- rzzzt 7y ago
  Yes, and it's more like "if someone believes in it, it is limited, otherwise not": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
  - criddell 7y ago
    Right. And it's different than decision fatigue.
hinkley 7y ago
I had a very, very illuminating discussion with the guy in charge of repairs when my kitchen sprung a leak. Kitchen layout is constrained a lot by physics, and again by ergonomics, and the customer's theories on how the kitchen should be don't always allow for these. He confessed that the reason they bombard you with a million tile and color and flooring and countertop options is to induce decision fatigue. So that when they hit you with the news that the sink can go in exactly two places and which one do you want, you just answer instead of fighting them on the stuff they know, care about, and cannot change no matter how long you monologue about it. I don't know if I was more shocked that they had this figured out, or that software developers don't.
- blt 7y ago
  By "physics" do you mean actual laws of physics, or "which wall contains the plumbing"?
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    You can't put the sink upside-down and have it pour up.
    - rzzzt 7y ago
      Not with that attitude!
  - hinkley 7y ago
    I mean that water doesn't flow uphill or horizontally. In most houses you can have an oven in the kitchen island, because wires and gas pipes can run any direction. But drain pipes have a run rate, and unless you want to do horrible things to the ceiling downstairs you can't have a drain line enter the floor more than say 6 feet from the nearest wall. I've heard tell of people getting quite upset about this information.
- allenu 7y ago
  This reminds me of large code reviews which have a million different things going on. After a while, people tune out and don't see bigger issues and quality of their feedback goes down, or they give up and say "yeah, all this seems fine to me". Compare that with a smaller code review with fewer things going on and where people end up being super opinionated on minor things. The sort of lesson in this example is if you want to get some design decision through that you know may be controversial, bury it in with a bunch of other changes. (Also related, the idea of announcing negative things on busy news days, i.e. "a good day to bury bad news".)
freepor 7y ago
Also, why your software should not be infinitely configurable, unless it depends on a network effect. Let the 5% of users with specialized needs go elsewhere.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Infinite configuration requires infinite testing.
  - pvarangot 7y ago
    That's why the only "agile lean scrappy startup" software that works has infinite users.
hinkley 7y ago
> and one of the best tools a successful businessman has is being able to differentiate between which decisions actually need their input A tool of a successful team lead is knowing which decisions can be deferred until there is more time, energy, and information to give them the consideration they deserve. And which ones are so easy to reverse later that drawing straws is a perfectly valid strategy. For the canonical 'bikeshedding' parable: My preferred escape route for a bunch of highly paid individuals to stop wasting time on what color to paint a goddamned shed is to budget enough time and materials for several different options and to move on. No matter what color you paint it, it will need to be painted again in 5 years anyway. Argue about the color then. Today you're supposed to be worried about the QC history of the concrete contractor, since you are going to be using some of the most expensive concrete known to man.
- specialist 7y ago
  Bikeshedding is the absolute worst. I've been very involved in (local) party politics. There are legitimate reasons why people despise parties, politics, policy, campaigns, planning, etc. Because it sucks. And there are some people who LIVE for the knife fight. Living incarnations of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-man... Of course this happens in all organizations, to varying degrees. I've struggled to come up with mitigations. Some have worked pretty good. Briefly. Like JADs (joint application development). With an enforcer playing Bad Cop. Codifying better governance in bylaws and codes of conduct can also help, a bit. But the moment you stop pumping energy into the system, things revert to the Tyranny of Structurelessness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...
s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
And it's why computer-assisted driving is so nice. You've felt decision fatigue if you've ever done long car drive.
baddox 7y ago
It's a little weird to say "before you even bother presenting evidence, I'm here to tell you that evidence doesn't matter because several people on this website have strong feelings." I don't know who's right, but I know that I am more likely to be convinced by arguments that use reason and evidence.
- cgriswald 7y ago
  I've been offered valid reasoning based on incomplete evidence as proof that something I've directly (and measurably!) experienced just doesn't happen at all (so, obviously, I'm just stupid or lying). The fact of the matter is that evidence is often lacking (lots of things are hard to measure and/or study); but incentives are aligned to find a conclusion anyway. So, I'm more likely to be convinced first by my own direct experience. And, sometimes, even though the name or explanation doesn't fit, the model is close enough: it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, and treating it like a duck yields the results I want; so it doesn't matter if my experience isn't perfectly aligned with evidence that shows ducks don't exist.
  - bosswipe 7y ago
    There's a difference between something you personally experience and a general trait of all humans.
  - baddox 7y ago
    As I understand it, "decision fatigue" is a particular explanation for the observation in people's own lives and the observation of other people that decision-making seems to get worse after long stretches of decision-making. If I've observed, for instance, that I make more bad decisions at work later in the day, no one is necessarily saying that I am fooling myself (although to be honest I would prefer to see rigorous studies even of that claim, since judging the value of one's own thoughts and decisions is pretty well-known to suffer from many biases). In this case I'm willing to accept that decision-making does tend to get worse after long stretches, but I'm more concerned with how to verify this particular explanation for why decision-making gets worse, and for that I think it's vitally important to do controlled experiments. One's own experience almost certainly has no explanatory power for why decision-making is getting worse. It's certainly a reasonable guess that my decision-making is getting worse because I've had to make many decisions today. But there are also other reasonable guesses. Maybe it's my diet, and I had more energy immediately after breakfast and lunch but less energy later in the afternoon. Maybe sunlight has an effect. Maybe simply knowing that I get to go home from work soon makes me less invested in decisions at the end of the day. A less reasonable guess would be something like "when the afternoon train starts running my decision-making gets worse." It still naively fits my observations, but we can probably agree that a controlled test would likely show this explanation to be incorrect (but who knows, maybe the train is loud and distracts me, or makes me think about my upcoming commute home!). These are all things that can probably be controlled for, and it wouldn't be too shocking to me if the number of decisions made in a day is not in fact a significant explanation for why the later decisions are poorer. I haven't even seen the study that was preemptively dismissed, but I'd like to.
melicerte 7y ago
> Case in point: it is 2 pm, I am on HN replying to this. Yet your input, although welcome, was not needed... bad businessman ? :)
SquareWheel 7y ago
>It exists, everyone on HN has experienced it It may seem like something that's easy to confirm, but the mind is a messy blob of bias. Real science needs to be done to give a conclusive answer. A single study (for or against) is only one step in that process. Remember, the plural of anecdote is not data.

beefield 7y ago

Decision fatigue is one of those things I am inclined to agree with my confirmation bias and just disregard studies that claim it does not exist. It just makes a bit too much sense.

hinkley 7y ago
If someone got belligerent about it, I might allow that it's just plain fatigue. Being tired or worn out reduces our ability to function at a level we demand of ourselves or others, leading some people to some pretty bad issues they don't know how to handle. It can be vigilance (which for some of us includes deciding things), overstimulation (background noise), understimulation (loneliness, boredom), physical exhaustion, illness... any or all of these can induce us to make other sorts of highly suspect decisions, including how we spend our free time, money, or how we treat others.

criddell 7y ago

I think that study is about the existence of ego depletion (willpower is a limited resource).

rzzzt 7y ago
Yes, and it's more like "if someone believes in it, it is limited, otherwise not": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
- criddell 7y ago
  Right. And it's different than decision fatigue.

hinkley 7y ago

I had a very, very illuminating discussion with the guy in charge of repairs when my kitchen sprung a leak. Kitchen layout is constrained a lot by physics, and again by ergonomics, and the customer's theories on how the kitchen should be don't always allow for these. He confessed that the reason they bombard you with a million tile and color and flooring and countertop options is to induce decision fatigue. So that when they hit you with the news that the sink can go in exactly two places and which one do you want, you just answer instead of fighting them on the stuff they know, care about, and cannot change no matter how long you monologue about it. I don't know if I was more shocked that they had this figured out, or that software developers don't.

blt 7y ago
By "physics" do you mean actual laws of physics, or "which wall contains the plumbing"?
- whatshisface 7y ago
  You can't put the sink upside-down and have it pour up.
  - rzzzt 7y ago
    Not with that attitude!
- hinkley 7y ago
  I mean that water doesn't flow uphill or horizontally. In most houses you can have an oven in the kitchen island, because wires and gas pipes can run any direction. But drain pipes have a run rate, and unless you want to do horrible things to the ceiling downstairs you can't have a drain line enter the floor more than say 6 feet from the nearest wall. I've heard tell of people getting quite upset about this information.
allenu 7y ago
This reminds me of large code reviews which have a million different things going on. After a while, people tune out and don't see bigger issues and quality of their feedback goes down, or they give up and say "yeah, all this seems fine to me". Compare that with a smaller code review with fewer things going on and where people end up being super opinionated on minor things. The sort of lesson in this example is if you want to get some design decision through that you know may be controversial, bury it in with a bunch of other changes. (Also related, the idea of announcing negative things on busy news days, i.e. "a good day to bury bad news".)

freepor 7y ago

Also, why your software should not be infinitely configurable, unless it depends on a network effect. Let the 5% of users with specialized needs go elsewhere.

hinkley 7y ago
Infinite configuration requires infinite testing.
- pvarangot 7y ago
  That's why the only "agile lean scrappy startup" software that works has infinite users.

hinkley 7y ago

> and one of the best tools a successful businessman has is being able to differentiate between which decisions actually need their input A tool of a successful team lead is knowing which decisions can be deferred until there is more time, energy, and information to give them the consideration they deserve. And which ones are so easy to reverse later that drawing straws is a perfectly valid strategy. For the canonical 'bikeshedding' parable: My preferred escape route for a bunch of highly paid individuals to stop wasting time on what color to paint a goddamned shed is to budget enough time and materials for several different options and to move on. No matter what color you paint it, it will need to be painted again in 5 years anyway. Argue about the color then. Today you're supposed to be worried about the QC history of the concrete contractor, since you are going to be using some of the most expensive concrete known to man.

specialist 7y ago
Bikeshedding is the absolute worst. I've been very involved in (local) party politics. There are legitimate reasons why people despise parties, politics, policy, campaigns, planning, etc. Because it sucks. And there are some people who LIVE for the knife fight. Living incarnations of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-man... Of course this happens in all organizations, to varying degrees. I've struggled to come up with mitigations. Some have worked pretty good. Briefly. Like JADs (joint application development). With an enforcer playing Bad Cop. Codifying better governance in bylaws and codes of conduct can also help, a bit. But the moment you stop pumping energy into the system, things revert to the Tyranny of Structurelessness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurelessne...

s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago

And it's why computer-assisted driving is so nice. You've felt decision fatigue if you've ever done long car drive.

baddox 7y ago

It's a little weird to say "before you even bother presenting evidence, I'm here to tell you that evidence doesn't matter because several people on this website have strong feelings." I don't know who's right, but I know that I am more likely to be convinced by arguments that use reason and evidence.

cgriswald 7y ago
I've been offered valid reasoning based on incomplete evidence as proof that something I've directly (and measurably!) experienced just doesn't happen at all (so, obviously, I'm just stupid or lying). The fact of the matter is that evidence is often lacking (lots of things are hard to measure and/or study); but incentives are aligned to find a conclusion anyway. So, I'm more likely to be convinced first by my own direct experience. And, sometimes, even though the name or explanation doesn't fit, the model is close enough: it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, and treating it like a duck yields the results I want; so it doesn't matter if my experience isn't perfectly aligned with evidence that shows ducks don't exist.
- bosswipe 7y ago
  There's a difference between something you personally experience and a general trait of all humans.
- baddox 7y ago
  As I understand it, "decision fatigue" is a particular explanation for the observation in people's own lives and the observation of other people that decision-making seems to get worse after long stretches of decision-making. If I've observed, for instance, that I make more bad decisions at work later in the day, no one is necessarily saying that I am fooling myself (although to be honest I would prefer to see rigorous studies even of that claim, since judging the value of one's own thoughts and decisions is pretty well-known to suffer from many biases). In this case I'm willing to accept that decision-making does tend to get worse after long stretches, but I'm more concerned with how to verify this particular explanation for why decision-making gets worse, and for that I think it's vitally important to do controlled experiments. One's own experience almost certainly has no explanatory power for why decision-making is getting worse. It's certainly a reasonable guess that my decision-making is getting worse because I've had to make many decisions today. But there are also other reasonable guesses. Maybe it's my diet, and I had more energy immediately after breakfast and lunch but less energy later in the afternoon. Maybe sunlight has an effect. Maybe simply knowing that I get to go home from work soon makes me less invested in decisions at the end of the day. A less reasonable guess would be something like "when the afternoon train starts running my decision-making gets worse." It still naively fits my observations, but we can probably agree that a controlled test would likely show this explanation to be incorrect (but who knows, maybe the train is loud and distracts me, or makes me think about my upcoming commute home!). These are all things that can probably be controlled for, and it wouldn't be too shocking to me if the number of decisions made in a day is not in fact a significant explanation for why the later decisions are poorer. I haven't even seen the study that was preemptively dismissed, but I'd like to.

melicerte 7y ago

> Case in point: it is 2 pm, I am on HN replying to this. Yet your input, although welcome, was not needed... bad businessman ? :)

SquareWheel 7y ago

>It exists, everyone on HN has experienced it It may seem like something that's easy to confirm, but the mind is a messy blob of bias. Real science needs to be done to give a conclusive answer. A single study (for or against) is only one step in that process. Remember, the plural of anecdote is not data.