Back in 2000, psychologist Sheena Iyengar ran a jam tasting experiment at a California grocery store. When she offered 24 types of jam, 60% of shoppers stopped to look. When she reduced the selection to just six, only 40% stopped.
But here’s the surprise: the group with fewer choices bought jam at ten times the rate.
This study inspired Barry Schwartz’s 2004 book The Paradox of Choice, which puts a name to a feeling many of us know. You go to the store for dish soap and find 47 options. After a few minutes, you grab one at random, then spend the rest of your trip second-guessing your choice. By the time you get home, you feel more tired than when you left, even though you haven’t made any big decisions.
This is decision fatigue in action. It’s not a sign of weakness or being indecisive. It’s simply what happens when your brain runs low on the energy it needs to make choices.
Decision fatigue when shopping
Decision fatigue means your ability to make good choices gets worse after making too many decisions in a row. Researchers first noticed this in judges, doctors, and executives—people whose decisions can have serious effects. For example, one study found that Israeli judges granted parole 65% of the time early in the day, but almost never by late morning. After a food break, their approval rate went back up.
Shopping for household items works the same way, just on a smaller scale. Every time you look at cleaning supplies, groceries, or kitchen staples, your brain has to compare options, check prices, think about past experiences, and make a choice. Each small decision uses up mental energy. Stores are set up to make you make as many of these choices as possible. By the time you reach the third aisle, your brain often just picks what’s familiar or cheapest, even if it’s not the best option.
Research on ‘overchoice,’ a term from Schwartz’s book, shows that having more options leads to more anxiety, more regret, and less satisfaction with what you pick. The answer isn’t to have more willpower. It’s to have fewer decisions to make.
Pick your defaults and stop reconsidering them.
The best way to cut down on decision fatigue when shopping is to pick a default brand or product for each category and stick with it.
Choosing defaults might seem simple, but most people don’t do it in a consistent way. You might have a favourite laundry detergent until you see another one on sale and start comparing again. Or you buy the same shampoo for months, but when the shelf changes, you end up reading every label all over again.
With a defaults system, you make a choice once and stick with it. For example, your dish soap is always the green one in the tall bottle. Your bin bags are always the same size and brand. Your cleaning spray is the one you know works. You only rethink these choices if the product is discontinued or stops working well.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz calls this approach being a “satisficer”—someone who looks for good enough instead of the absolute best. Satisficers are usually happier with their purchases than “maximizers,” who spend lots of time searching for the perfect option. For everyday items where the differences are small, being a satisficer saves time and energy without any real downside.
Make a list of your default products by category—cleaning, paper goods, personal care, kitchen, laundry. Choose one product for each. You can review the list once a year if you like, but otherwise, you’re set.
Build a shopping list that decides for you.
A shopping list isn’t just there to help you remember things. If you use it well, it becomes a tool that stops you from making the same decisions over and over.
A typical shopping list, whether scribbled on paper or typed into your phone, still leaves you making choices in the store. You might write “pasta sauce” but not specify which kind, so you end up choosing from twelve jars. Or you write “cleaning spray” but have to pick between three types you’ve used before. Each time, you’re making a decision you could have settled at home.
A better approach is to make a master list by category, listing the exact products you want. Instead of just “pasta sauce,” write “Classico Tomato and Basil, 650ml.” Instead of “bin bags,” write the brand and size you’ve chosen. Instead of “cleaning spray,” write the product name. The first time you make this list, it might take twenty minutes. After that, it only takes a couple of minutes to check off what you need.
If you shop for groceries online, save your full cart from a week when everything worked well. Next time, use it as your starting point and just adjust for fresh produce or anything you’re out of. This way, you go from making sixty decisions to just a handful.
Alyssa Post, a registered dietitian nutritionist at Banner Health, suggests keeping a list of eight to twelve meals your household enjoys and rotating through them. This helps prevent decision fatigue about what to eat. The same idea works for shopping—once you have a meal plan, your shopping list follows naturally.
Shop earlier in the week and earlier in the day
The quality of your decisions depends on when you make them, whether you’re in a supermarket or a courtroom.
Studies on decision fatigue show that your mind is sharpest early in the day and after breaks. In the Israeli judge study mentioned earlier, judges granted parole at higher rates after a food and rest break, but their decision quality dropped again as the day went on. This mental drain builds up with every decision, not just the big ones.
For shopping, the worst time is Thursday evening after work, when you’ve already made decisions all day and dealt with your commute. The best time is Saturday or Sunday morning, when your mind is fresh and your list is ready.
Shopping after work on weekdays is also when stores are busiest, which means more noise and extra decisions about where to go. Shopping when it’s quieter, with fewer people and cleaner shelves, makes the trip faster and less tiring.
If you can only shop in the evenings, try online grocery pickup or delivery. This way, you just use a search bar and your list instead of facing thousands of products in the store.
Set a time limit on research before buying something new.
It’s easy to use defaults and lists for routine household items. The challenge comes with new purchases, like a new appliance, a different cleaner, or a replacement for something that’s no longer available.
New purchases really do need some research, and the internet gives you endless information. You could read 200 reviews of a kettle, but most people end up more confused, not less, because those reviews often contradict each other or mention rare problems that probably won’t matter to you.
Barry Schwartz suggests setting a time limit for research before making a decision. Decide ahead of time how long you’ll spend—maybe ten minutes for conditioner, thirty for a vacuum. Make your choice within that time. Before you start, write down your priorities, like size, price, or durability, and use those to guide your search. When your time is up, stop researching.
Research on satisficing backs this up. Decisions made with a set time limit are just as good as those made after hours of research. They’re also faster, less likely to be regretted, and less draining.
When it comes to household items, the risks are low. If you pick a vacuum in thirty minutes and it’s just okay, that’s still better than spending two hours researching and ending up stuck or second-guessing yourself.
Let subscriptions handle the things that never change.
Some household items are so routine that you shouldn’t have to decide about them at all, things like toilet paper, dishwasher tablets, laundry detergent, pet food, and coffee. For these, the brand, size, and quantity usually stay the same for months or even years.
Subscription services, like Amazon Subscribe and Save, local grocery delivery, or other brands’ own programs, take these decisions off your plate. The items arrive on a set schedule, so you don’t have to browse, compare, or remember to add them to your list.
When you automate shopping for things you use all the time, like pet food, cleaning supplies, or toiletries, you don’t have to make those decisions anymore. This saves your mental energy for choices that really matter.
Setting up subscriptions takes a little effort—maybe twenty minutes—but you’ll get that time back within the first month. If your household subscribes to four or five staple items, you won’t have to think about those categories at all.
Decide out of the deciding.
The exhaustion you feel after a long shopping trip isn’t from carrying a heavy cart. It’s from making hundreds of small decisions in a noisy, busy store designed to make you choose as much as possible.
You don’t need extra willpower or a new personality to use these systems. Defaults, a master list, better shopping times, time-limited research, and a few subscriptions each take away a set of decisions before you even enter the store.
The jam study is nearly 25 years old, but its lesson still holds true. Making fewer decisions ahead of time leads to better results and leaves you feeling less drained. It’s worth taking the time to set up these systems.
