Preface

Imagine waking up in the morning with no routine or established preferences to rely on. Every decision, from the mundane to the significant, would require both time and mental effort. To decide what to wear, you would need to consider every item of clothing in your closet; to cook breakfast, you would need to evaluate the entire contents of your pantry. A relatively simple and mundane task, like getting to work in the morning, could become a herculean feat, and that is before encountering any decisions that one might normally classify as fraught or difficult. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, these usually unconscious aspects of everyday decision-making gained an unusual degree of attention. The disruption to daily routines led many people to experience a phenomenon known as decision fatigue.1 As the pandemic stretched on, and the official safety guidance kept changing, many of us found ourselves constantly revisiting and reassessing our decisions about basic daily activities, such as whether (and how) to visit family or friends, go to the grocery store, go to the doctor, or arrange childcare. Often, the simple act of making (and remaking) these basic choices exhausted our decision-making capacities. When more significant challenges presented themselves, such as a problem at work or a sick family member, many of us not only felt overwhelmed, but found that our ability to carefully deliberate about the best course of action was, in a real sense, debilitated.