So the other day I caught myself standing in the kitchen trying to make another tiny decision. I honestly can’t even remember what it was. But I remember thinking, likely mentally screaming, Why does it feel like I’ve been deciding things all day?!
It wasn’t one big decision that had exhausted me. It was dozens of little ones.
Do I answer that text now or later? Should I stop at Target while I’m already out? Chicken or salmon tonight? White sneakers or sandals? Should I order it from Amazon or just drive to the store? And none of those decisions are particularly difficult. But put enough of them together and suddenly my brain is about to blow.
And so, lately I’ve been wondering: Are our brains actually meant to make this many decisions?
Not the big, consequential decisions, but the tiny, constant ones that don’t seem important enough to count — and yet somehow leave you standing in your kitchen at the end of the day wondering why you’re so freaking tired.
Turns out, there’s a name for at least part of this: decision fatigue.
What Is Decision Fatigue?
Decision fatigue is the idea that making repeated choices can become mentally taxing. Research has found that the act of choosing itself can contribute to mental fatigue, even when the individual decisions aren’t particularly difficult or unpleasant. American Psychological Association
Which makes so much sense to me because I don’t usually reach the end of a day thinking, Wow, I made an enormous number of decisions today, good for me! I think, Why am I so tired? I haven’t even done that much.
But maybe my brain has. (Ah-haaa!)
We’re constantly accessible, always deciding and comparing, and remembering things that used to live somewhere outside ourselves. Where? Beats me—but it wasn’t in my head. A text comes in from school. Then an email. Then I remember I need to RSVP to something. A package notification pops up while I’m trying to answer a client. I realize we’re almost out of toothpaste. Someone needs to know what’s for dinner. Before I know it, my brain has switched gears five different times and it’s barely breakfast.
So I’ve started to think that maybe we confuse accessibility with capacity.
Just because someone can reach me at any moment doesn’t mean my brain was designed to be available at every moment.
Decision Fatigue Isn’t Just About Making Decisions
For women and Mothers, though, I think there’s another layer to this. Some of the decisions exhausting us aren’t really individual decisions at all. They’re part of a much larger category of work: anticipating, planning, remembering, monitoring, researching, coordinating, and figuring out what needs to happen next.
In other words, the decision is often just the visible tip of the work.
Take something as ordinary as making dinner. “Chicken or salmon?” sounds like one decision. Except somebody may also have to notice what food is running low, remembered what everyone ate yesterday, thought about what their kiddo will actually eat, checked whether there’s enough time to cook it, figured out whether groceries are needed and mentally calculated what tomorrow night’s dinner needs to be because tonight’s choice affects that too.
Suddenly chicken or salmon isn’t really chicken or salmon.
It’s household management. (Dunnnn-dunnn-dunnnn)
Incidentally, this is part of what I write about in The Motherhood Setup: so much of the work Mothers carry isn’t necessarily visible as work. And when we don’t count it, it’s remarkably easy to assume our exhaustion means there’s something wrong with us. (There isn’t. Just some deeply ingrained cultural conditioning. But I digress.)
The Mental Load Is Real Work
Stay with me because there’s research to support this too.
A study of 322 Mothers of young children examined the difference between the physical work of running a household and the cognitive work—the anticipating, planning and delegating that happens before the visible task ever gets done. Mothers in the study reported carrying about 73% of the cognitive household labor, and a greater share of that cognitive work was associated with higher stress, burnout and depressive symptoms, along with poorer overall mental health and relationship functioning. PubMed Central (PMC)
I find that distinction incredibly important because it’s one thing to wash the soccer uniform. It’s another thing to remember that tomorrow is soccer day, know the uniform is dirty, calculate when it needs to go into the washer so it’s dry by morning, remember that the water bottle is still in the car and realize you’re also supposed to bring snacks this week.
One is a task.
The other is carrying the task in your head before, during and after it happens.
And you can be doing that while driving, working, showering, trying to fall asleep or technically “resting.”
No wonder my brain feels crowded. You?
Why Women Can Be Especially Vulnerable to Decision Fatigue
I want to be careful here because decision fatigue isn’t exclusive to women, and Invisible Labor isn’t exclusive to Mothers.
But I do think there’s a particular intersection worth naming. You see, women have historically been expected to be the noticers. The rememberers. The ones who anticipate what other people need and keep things moving without necessarily being asked. Add work, parenting, relationships, smartphones, email, group texts, online shopping, school portals, calendars, social obligations and the approximately 4,000 passwords I’m apparently supposed to remember, and that’s a hell of a lot of cognitive traffic.
And here’s where Good Girl Conditioning can make the whole thing even heavier.
If part of being “good” means being capable, thoughtful, prepared, responsive and on top of things, then reducing the number of things you’re carrying can feel strangely uncomfortable.
You don’t just have a lot to remember.
You believe you should be able to remember it.
And that’s a very different burden.
It’s also part of what I explore in my book Good Girl, Bad Mom: what happens when women who’ve spent their lives learning to be capable, accommodating and in control encounter a role that generates an almost endless supply of things to manage. (I’ll give you one guess.)
Maybe the Answer Isn’t Getting Better at Handling Everything
For a long time, my instinct when I felt overwhelmed was to become more efficient. I’d find a better system, reorganize my list, mess with my calendar, or convince myself that if I could just get a little more organized, everything would feel easier. And listen, I love a system. I’m not giving up my lists anytime soon. But I’ve started wondering whether constantly improving our ability to carry more is always the answer. Maybe sometimes the answer is simply having less to carry.
This is one of the reasons my Better Is Better Philosophy has become so important to me. I originally thought about it mostly as an antidote to perfectionism: intentionally letting something be about twenty percent less perfect so I could keep it moving instead of getting stuck trying to make everything exactly right. I still believe that, but now I see another benefit: it protects my mental bandwidth. Every time I decide something is good enough, use the default, repeat something that worked last week, let someone else own the decision, or simply decide something doesn’t need my attention at all, I’ve closed a tab. And sometimes, when there’s one particular decision taking up entirely too much space in your head, you don’t need another system. You may just need one really good coaching conversation to talk it through.
Count What Your Brain Is Carrying
Writing Good Girl, Bad Mom taught me to pay attention to the work we don’t count, and I think the same applies here. If you’ve been wondering why you feel so mentally tired even on a day when you haven’t technically “done that much,” maybe there’s a better question to ask than What’s wrong with me?
What has my brain been carrying that I haven’t been counting?
Danielle xx
She is the creator of The Motherhood Setup, a framework for understanding how the Motherhood Fantasy, Good Girl Conditioning, and Invisible Labor collide to leave so many Mothers overwhelmed. Her work asks what changes when we begin to make the invisible visible, Count the Work, and recognize Motherhood as both a joy and a job.
Explore Dr. Dowling's work on modern Motherhood
- Do You Need a Life Coach—or Just One Really Good Coaching Session? - Oct 5, 2026
- Decision Fatigue: Why Your Brain Feels So Overloaded - Sep 28, 2026
- Good Girl, Bad Mom: For Every Mom Who’s Ever Felt Imperfect - Sep 25, 2026