5 Brain-Informed Tips for Pandemic Decision Making

Decision Fatigue is real. And it’s making everything harder.

I am a chronically indecisive person. As a teenager in a middle-class community, I watched friends open college acceptance letters and immediately declare where they’d be attending. Me? My parents had to lock me in the house on the day of the commitment deadline, telling me I couldn’t leave until I decided on a school. Highly privileged, easy, breezy teenage me just crumbled under that “pressure” (picture those as air quotes accompanied by an eyeroll).

Fast forward to 2020. What used to feel small now looms large, and what was already large feels insurmountable. Can I go to a restaurant? Can our kids have their friends over? Is traveling safe? How about beaches, pools, or parks? Many of us are grappling with whether or not to send children back to school in the fall, what to do to make ends meet after lost or reduced employment, and how to grieve losses incurred over the past several months, all while navigating our own stress and the stress of our loved ones and communities.

Two intertwined public health pandemics — one being COVID-19 and the other being the ongoing assault on Black livelihood — can have even the most confidently decisive feeling exhausted, confused, and highly dysregulated. With COVID, it’s been months, with white supremacy…