There are days when you finish work feeling completely worn out, even though nothing dramatic has happened. No crisis. No disaster. Just a steady stream of questions, messages, interruptions and decisions.
And yet your brain feels full. Heavy. Done.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
What you’ll learn
In this post, we’ll look at:
- why decision fatigue is so common in small businesses
- how it shows up on completely normal working days
- why wearing too many hats makes everything feel heavier
- simple, practical ways to reduce the mental load
- how clarity and shared responsibility can make work feel lighter
Running a small business or supporting a small team often means carrying far more responsibility than people realise. The constant thinking, deciding and juggling builds up quietly over time.
There’s a name for it: decision fatigue.
It’s one of the most common pressures in small businesses, especially for owners and office managers who find themselves doing a bit of everything. And it’s one of the biggest reasons work can feel harder than it should.
The kind of tired sleep doesn’t fix
Decision fatigue isn’t the same as being physically tired. It’s that foggy, overwhelmed feeling that comes from having to think, decide, judge and prioritise all day long.
It’s the tired that shows up when you open your inbox and immediately feel behind. When you put off replying to a simple message because it feels oddly demanding. When you reread the same email three times and still don’t quite process it. When you start the day with good intentions and end it wondering where the time went.
What makes it confusing is that none of the individual decisions feel particularly hard. It’s the volume of them that drains you.
Why small businesses are decision fatigue factories
In larger organisations, decisions are shared out. There are departments, managers, systems and processes that absorb some of the thinking.
In small businesses, most of that lands on a handful of people. Often just one.
If you’re an owner or office manager, your day might include decisions about staffing, cover, absence, holidays, customers, suppliers, admin, finances, priorities and deadlines. You might switch between all of those before lunchtime.
You could start the morning planning to work on a proposal, only to spend the first hour approving holiday requests, answering questions about cover, chasing a supplier, and rearranging the rota because someone’s called in sick.
By the time you sit down properly, your brain is already tired.
And because small teams usually run lean, there’s very little margin for error. When someone is off, when a deadline moves, when something unexpected crops up, the impact is immediate.
Suddenly your day is reshuffled and you’re making even more decisions just to keep things ticking over.
The invisible effort of “just dealing with things”
One of the reasons decision fatigue is so draining is that so much of it is invisible.
From the outside, it can look like you’re “just answering emails” or “just sorting the rota” or “just approving requests”. But mentally, there’s a lot going on underneath.
Every time you’re asked a question, your brain has to stop what it’s doing, switch context, remember the background, check the details, weigh up the impact, make a call and move on.
You might be halfway through writing a report when a message pops up asking if someone can leave early tomorrow. That sends you down a mental path: who’s already off, whether there’s cover, what deadlines are coming up, whether it’s fair, and whether it sets a precedent.
It only takes a minute to reply. But your brain has done a lot of work in that minute.
When that happens dozens of times a day, it adds up.
That’s exhausting.
And when information is scattered across messages, spreadsheets, notebooks and conversations, your brain ends up acting as the central filing system.
It’s a lot for one brain to carry.
Wearing too many hats makes everything heavier
Decision fatigue gets even harder when your role keeps expanding.
Many people in small businesses start with one job and quietly acquire several more. Over time, you become the person who deals with HR, manages absence, keeps things organised, knows where everything is, remembers what was agreed and fixes problems when they appear.
You’re not just doing tasks. You’re carrying responsibility.
And when everything ultimately comes back to you, your brain never really switches off. Even when you’re not actively working, there’s a background awareness of what still needs doing.
That’s why it can be so hard to properly rest.
Why everything starts to feel urgent
One of the most common side effects of decision fatigue is that everything starts to feel equally important.
When your mental load is high, it’s harder to judge what really needs attention and what can wait. Small things feel big. Big things feel overwhelming.
You might notice yourself reacting rather than planning. Firefighting instead of thinking ahead. Getting through the day rather than shaping it.
Again, this isn’t a personal failing. It’s a very normal response to sustained pressure.
What actually helps (and where to start)
Reducing decision fatigue in a small business isn’t about becoming hyper-productive or building complicated systems. It’s about making your working day feel lighter.
It starts with noticing where your brain is doing work that something else could do instead.
1. Turn repeated decisions into clear defaults
A lot of decision fatigue comes from making the same judgement calls over and over again.
What counts as short-notice holiday.
When cover needs to be arranged.
What needs approval and what doesn’t.
Who needs to be told when someone’s off.
When these things only live in your head, every request becomes a fresh decision.
Clear expectations turn decisions into defaults. Instead of thinking everything through from scratch, you’re simply applying what everyone already understands.
That might look like:
- simple guidelines around notice periods
- a clear process for booking time off
- agreed rules for cover
Once people know what’s normal, you spend less time weighing things up and more time just saying yes or no.
2. Stop using your brain as the filing system
Another huge source of fatigue is trying to remember everything.
Who’s off next week.
What was agreed in Monday’s meeting.
Which supplier is due to deliver tomorrow.
Whether you already approved that request.
If you find yourself thinking “I must remember to…”, multiple times a day, your mental load is already too high.
When information is scattered across emails, notebooks, spreadsheets and messages, your brain has to keep joining the dots. You’re constantly holding things in the background just in case they’re needed later.
That background awareness is exhausting.
Having one clear place for key information means you don’t have to rely on memory or inbox searches. You can just look and know.
This is where tools like The Holiday Tracker quietly help. When holidays, sickness and availability live in one shared calendar, that’s one whole category of information your brain no longer has to carry.
3. Remove the mental drain of uncertainty
That constant background feeling of:
“Have I already dealt with this?”
“Did I approve that?”
“Was that logged somewhere?”
is surprisingly draining.
Uncertainty creates mental looping. You reread emails. You search messages. You check spreadsheets. You ask the same question twice. You wake up wondering if you forgot something.
Clear records and visible status remove that friction. They give your brain permission to move on.
It’s not about bureaucracy. It’s about peace of mind.
4. Protect time for proper thinking
In small businesses, most people work in reactive mode. Responding. Solving. Fixing.
If your day is built entirely around interruptions, your brain never gets a chance to reset. You’re constantly switching context, which is one of the biggest drivers of mental fatigue.
You might start the day with a clear plan, only to spend the morning reacting to emails, messages and questions. By lunchtime, you haven’t touched your most important task, but your brain feels like it’s run a marathon.
Even one or two protected windows each week can help. Time when you’re not approving, replying or firefighting. Just thinking, planning, or finishing one important thing properly.
That sense of progress is incredibly restorative.
5. Use your best energy for your hardest decisions
Decision-making uses energy. And that energy runs down as the day goes on.
If there are things you know will need a clear head – planning, problem-solving, important conversations, tricky approvals – try to do them earlier.
Save routine admin for later in the day when your mental capacity is lower.
It’s a small shift, but many people notice the difference quickly.
6. Let go of perfect decisions
When your brain is tired, everything feels important.
You start overthinking. Second-guessing. Rewriting emails. Revisiting decisions.
In reality, most decisions just need to be sensible.
Good enough really is good enough.
Letting go of perfection frees up a surprising amount of mental energy.
7. Share responsibility, not just tasks
Decision fatigue grows when everything comes back to you.
Approvals. Updates. Chasing. Remembering. Fixing.
You become the person everyone comes to for answers. And even when you’re not actively doing the work, your brain is tracking it.
Delegation isn’t about offloading jobs. It’s about sharing responsibility.
That might mean:
- letting someone else manage a regular process
- trusting a team member to handle routine approvals
- giving someone ownership of a task instead of checking it every time
When decisions are shared, your mental load lightens. And when responsibility is spread, the business becomes more resilient too.
Even small changes can make a difference. You don’t need to overhaul the way you run your business or suddenly become brilliant at letting go. Just noticing where your mental load is highest is a good place to start.
Over time, clarity and shared responsibility add up to a lighter working day.
A final thought
If decision fatigue is something you’re feeling right now, it’s worth remembering that you’re not failing. You’re responding to a workload that asks a lot of your brain, every single day.
Small businesses rely on people who care. People who step up. People who take responsibility. And that mental load is real work, even when no one else can see it.
Finding ways to bring clarity, share responsibility and remove friction isn’t about being more efficient. It’s about making work feel more manageable.
For many small teams, one of the biggest sources of daily decision-making is managing who’s in, who’s off, and whether the business is covered. That’s exactly the problem The Holiday Tracker was built to solve. By giving you a clear, shared view of holidays, sickness and availability in one place, it removes a whole layer of background thinking from your day.
It’s not about adding another system. It’s about giving your brain a break.
