There are days in recruitment where by 4pm I genuinely don’t want to make another decision.

Not another big decision.

Any decision.

What am I having for dinner?

Dunno.

Do I want to train?

Dunno.

Should I reply to that email now?

Ask me tomorrow.

I’ve thought about this a lot – this is definitely something we underestimate in recruitment.

Because think about how many decisions you make in a normal day.

• Which candidate do I call first?
• Is this person actually right for the role?
• Do I send them?
• Do I push the client?
• Do I negotiate this salary?
• Is this job worth working?
• Do I keep chasing this candidate?
• Do I make another BD call?
• Should I take this meeting?
• Do I discount the fee?
• Do I challenge the hiring manager?
• Do I tell the candidate they’re being unrealistic?
• Do I call now or later?

Then chuck in emails, Teams, Slack, LinkedIn, your phone, people walking up to your desk and whatever is happening outside work.

That’s a sh*tload of decisions!

And eventually your brain starts looking for the easiest option.

That’s where decision fatigue gets interesting.

What is decision fatigue?

At its simplest, decision fatigue describes what can happen when the cumulative mental load of making decisions starts affecting the decisions that come afterwards.

There is research suggesting repeated decision-making can affect persistence and subsequent behaviour, although the science around the exact mechanism is more complicated than some of the internet would have you believe.

The old idea that we simply have a little daily tank of “willpower” that gets emptied has been heavily debated.

So I’m not going to tell you that after exactly 37 decisions your brain turns to mashed potato.

But I think most recruiters will recognise the experience.

You make hundreds of little judgement calls all day.

And later in the day, suddenly:

“I’ll do it tomorrow” sounds pretty bloody reasonable.

Decision fatigue doesn’t always look like making a bad decision

This is the bit I find interesting.

Sometimes it’s not making one at all.

You know you should call that client.

But you decide to send an email instead.

You’ve got three candidates and need to decide who you’re putting forward.

“I’ll have another look tomorrow.”

You know a job isn’t really workable.

But rather than having the conversation with the client, you leave it sitting there.

You should probably tell a candidate they’re asking for $30k more than the market will pay.

Maybe later.

You’ve got BD to do.

But before you start, perhaps you should spend 25 minutes deciding which 10 people you’re going to call.

Then make none of the calls.

Sound familiar?

That’s where I reckon decision fatigue can quietly hammer a recruitment desk.

Not necessarily through one catastrophic decision.

Through avoidance, delay and defaulting to the easiest option.

Recruitment is basically one long decision tree

This is why I reckon recruiters should care about it.

Our job is incredibly decision-heavy.

And a lot of those decisions have emotional weight attached to them.

Candidate pulls out.

What do I do?

Client rejects everyone.

What do I do?

Job goes on hold.

What do I do?

Someone doesn’t answer.

Do I call again?

Candidate gets another offer.

Do I push?

Client wants a fee reduction.

Do I hold?

None of those decisions exist neatly on their own either.

You’re making them while five emails arrive, your phone rings and someone next to you asks what you think about their candidate.

Then at 4:30pm you’re asking your brain to make a really good commercial decision on a $30,000 placement.

Maybe we should be a bit more deliberate about what we’re asking our brains to do all day.

Stop wasting decisions on sh*t that doesn’t matter

This is probably the most practical place to start.

How many decisions in your day actually need to be decisions?

• What time do you do BD?
• When do you follow up candidates?
• When do you clear email?
• When do you go to the gym?
• When do you plan tomorrow?
• When do you update your CRM?

If you renegotiate all of that with yourself every single day, you’re creating decisions you don’t need.

This is one of the reasons I bang on so much about habits and routines.

A good routine removes the negotiation and necessity to even think about it.

If I decide every morning whether I feel like training, I’ve created another decision.

If Tuesday at 6am is training, I just go.

It’s part of the reason I live and die by my calendar – it is much easier to follow a plan than create one. So in my life, I put every single thing in my calendar. Work, kids sport, music, appointments, date lunch with wifey, my appointments – even bloody down-time.

Why? Because if it’s in my calendar, I just have to “do”, I don’t have to “decide”.

Same with recruitment.

If 9-10am is BD time, you don’t need an internal board meeting at 8:57am about whether today feels like a good day to make calls. Put it in your calendar & go.

Make fewer decisions.

Save your thinking for the ones that actually require thinking.

And yes, obviously sometimes (or often) in recruitment, the best laid plans get thrown out the window because something else happens. I’m not saying ignore that.

I’m saying that where possible, if you can take a decision out of your life.

Remove it.

Your brain will thank you.

Make your important decisions when you’re at your best

We have a saying in our office (and in my home) that you “never make a decision from bed”. Why? Because you’re not in state. Your energy is low, you just want to go back to sleep – maybe you’re feeling foggy.

The decision won’t be the same as if you’re in a higher state of energy.

Everyone has different periods where they’re sharpest.

For me, there are things I’d much rather tackle early when my head is clear than at the end of a massive day.

So look at your own work.

What requires actual judgement?

• Negotiations.
• Offer management.
• Important client conversations.
• Strategy.
• Writing a proposal.
• Deciding whether to take on a role.
• Planning how you’re going to crack a difficult account.

Why are you doing that stuff when you’re mentally cooked?

We obsess over calendar management.

Maybe we should think a little more about cognitive management.

Don’t just ask:

When do I have time to do this?

Ask:

When am I best equipped to do this well?

Whilst I love my calendar, the biggest shift I had in my recruitment game was when I started organising it around my energy.

Energy management is an absolute GAME-CHANGER. When you start calendarising your high-energy tasks for when you know you have energy, vs. your low-energy tasks for when you know you’re cooked – you will see your results go through the roof.

Give yourself rules for repeat decisions

Recruitment has loads of situations that repeat.

So decide once how you generally want to handle them.

• What types of jobs won’t you work?
• What’s your minimum fee?
• When will you walk away from a client?
• How quickly do you follow up?
• What does a candidate need before you’ll represent them?
• What warrants interrupting your planned day?
• What can wait?

Obviously there will be exceptions.

But having principles means you don’t have to rebuild your answer from scratch every bloody time.

At ALRA we have plenty of these.

One of our big ones is:

Do the right thing, always.

Sounds almost ridiculously simple.

But it gives you a filter.

When you’re stuck between options, sometimes the question becomes:

What’s actually the right thing to do here?

Decision gets a whole lot easier.

Your systems should do some of the thinking for you

This is another reason I love systems.

A good system doesn’t just make you more organised.

It reduces the number of things you need to actively remember and decide.

• CRM reminders.
• Call lists.
• Templates.
• Automated follow-ups where appropriate.
• Clear workflows.
• Calendar blocks.
• Checklists.
• Pipeline reviews.

Even something as basic as writing tomorrow’s priority list before you finish today.

You’re essentially leaving instructions for tomorrow-you.

And tomorrow-you doesn’t have to wake up and spend the first hour deciding where to start.

Be careful with your afternoons

I reckon this is where people can accidentally sabotage themselves.

You spend the first six hours of the day reacting.

Email.

Meetings.

Messages.

Random problems.

Low-value decisions.

Then at 3pm you finally get to the activity that actually makes you money.

BD.

Candidate calls.

Offer management.

Strategy.

Except now your brain has been kicked around all day.

You’re mentally fatigued.

So you procrastinate.

Or take the easy option.

Or decide you’ll attack it properly tomorrow.

And then tomorrow looks exactly the same.

If something genuinely drives your results, stop giving it the leftovers of your brain.

Put it somewhere in the day where you’ve actually got something to give it.

Sometimes the best productivity hack is making life more boring

I know that’s not particularly sexy.

But I reckon there’s something in it.

Same training times.

Same planning process.

Same BD blocks.

Same morning routine.

Same basic lunch.

Same rules around your desk.

Same process for qualifying jobs.

Same way you prepare for important calls.

Not because you want to become some weird recruitment robot.

But because routine removes decisions from the parts of life that don’t deserve much thought.

Which leaves more capacity for the stuff that does.

And sometimes you just need a bloody break

We also need to acknowledge the obvious.

If you’re tired, stressed, hungry, overwhelmed and you’ve been making calls all day, you probably aren’t operating at your absolute cognitive peak.

That doesn’t mean every afternoon decision is automatically sh*t.

But fatigue, workload and repeated decision-making are sensible things to factor into how you structure your work.

Recent research into decision-heavy professions continues to investigate how cognitive, emotional and situational factors interact rather than treating decision fatigue as one simple depleted battery.

So take lunch.

Go outside.

Get 5 minutes of sunlight.

Touch grass.

Walk around the block.

Have a coffee.

Train.

Finish for the day.

Sleep.

Sometimes another hour staring at the laptop isn’t high performance.

It’s just another hour staring at the laptop.

Your results aren’t only about how hard you work

This is probably one of the most important points for me.

Recruitment performance gets talked about in terms of activity all the time.

How many calls?

How many meetings?

How many CVs?

How many jobs?

And obviously activity matters. We don’t make placements without it.

But the quality of the decisions underneath that activity matters too.

• Which jobs you choose to work.
• Which candidates you prioritise.
• Which clients get your time.
• When you push.
• When you walk away.
• Where you spend your next hour.

Those decisions compound.

So if your day is currently one giant stream of reacting, deciding, switching, checking and reconsidering…

Maybe the answer isn’t trying to squeeze more activity into it.

Maybe you need to make fewer pointless decisions, build better defaults and save your brain for the decisions that actually make you money.

Because being busy is one thing.

Making bloody good decisions while you’re busy?

That’s the difference between mediocre and elite performance.