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Burnout and Decision-Making: When Mental Exhaustion Takes the Wheel
You’re staring at an email that requires a simple response… but you just can’t decide what to say.
Or worse – you’re making rushed decisions you later regret.
If this sounds familiar, it might not be “just stress.” It could be burnout. And one of burnout’s most subtle but destructive impacts is the way it messes with your ability to think clearly and make good decisions.
Let’s unpack what’s going on in that beautiful, overworked brain of yours.
Every day, your brain helps you navigate thousands of choices – from “What do I wear?” to “How do I manage this team crisis?”
The part of your brain responsible for these complex decisions is called the executive system, primarily housed in the prefrontal cortex (1). It handles:
In short, executive function is what helps us stay calm, think ahead, and make decisions that match our long-term goals, not just our short-term emotions.
But when burnout hits? That system goes offline.
Burnout is more than tiredness; it is a state of cognitive and emotional depletion that impacts every part of the brain’s executive control (2).
Research shows that burnout affects:
Burnout can quite literally change the chemistry of your brain. A study by Wiehler et al. (2022) (3) found that prolonged cognitive effort raises glutamate levels in the prefrontal cortex, leading to fatigue and poor decisions.
People with burnout struggled across multiple cognitive domains, from memory to problem-solving (4). So when you’re burned out and struggling to decide what to eat, how to reply to that tricky email, or whether to take a job opportunity, it’s not just you being indecisive. It’s a symptom of impaired executive function.
Interestingly, burnout doesn’t show up the same way in everyone. Some people become impulsive, making snap decisions, reacting emotionally, or taking unnecessary risks. Others become indecisive, frozen by overthinking and mental fatigue.
Burnout shifts the brain into “survival mode,” where quick reactions take priority over careful thought. You may find yourself:
Chronic stress disrupts the balance between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, leading to less control and more reactivity (5).
Impulsivity includes both: (6)
And yes – that “just-send-it-and-hope-for-the-best” moment might be more about your burned-out brain than your personality.
On the other end, burnout can cause decision fatigue, a kind of mental shutdown where you’re overwhelmed by even small choices.
Signs of decision fatigue include (7):
Research shows that burnout impairs metacognition, your ability to evaluate your own thinking (8). You may not even realize your decisions are being affected, and that’s part of the danger.
In fast-paced, high-stakes workplaces, good decision-making isn’t optional; it’s critical. But when employees are burned out, they don’t just feel worse; they perform worse, especially when it comes to choosing wisely.
Burnout erodes:
And it does this quietly, often before anyone notices.
Burnout isn’t just about being tired. It’s about your brain losing its ability to manage the very functions that make you competent, reliable, and emotionally stable.
It can make you impulsive one day and paralyzed the next. And that inconsistency? It creates even more stress, shame, and self-doubt.
But here’s the good news: once we recognize what burnout does to our thinking, we can do something about it, for ourselves and our teams.
In the next article, I’ll explore burnout’s impact on creativity and innovation, and what that means for leaders, educators, healthcare professionals, and entrepreneurs.
Later in the series, I’ll dive into both individual recovery strategies and organizational interventions that actually work, because managing burnout is not just your responsibility. It is a shared one.
1 Salehinejad, M.A., Ghanavati, E. & Nitsche, M.A. (2023). Hot and cold executive functions in the brain: A prefrontal-cingular network. Brain and Neuroscience Advances, 2023:5. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/23982128211007769
2 Koutsimani, P. & Montgomery, A. (2022). Burnout and cognitive functioning: Are we underestimating the role of visuospatial functions? Frontiers in Psychiatry 13:775606. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.775606
3 Wiehler, A., Branzoli, F., Adanyeguh, I., Mochel, F. & Pessiglione, M. (2022). A neuro-metabolic account of why daylong cognitive work alters the control of economic decisions. Current Biology, 32(16), 3564-3575. Doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.010
4 Gavelin, H.M., Neely, A.S., Aronsson, I., Josefsson, M. & Andersson, L. (2023). Mental fatigue, cognitive performance, and automatic response following sustained mental activity in clinical burnout. Biological Psychology, 183:108661. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2023.108661
5 Roznowski, B. & Wontorczuk, A. (2024). Work engagement, impulsivity, and self-efficacy among Polish workers. Moderating role of impulsivity. PlosOne. Accessed on 2 March 2025. Available at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0311856
6 Morris, L., O’Callaghan, C., & Le Heron, C. (2022). Movement Disorders, 37(6), 1149-1163. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.29013
7 Stahl, A. (2022). How Burnout Affects Your Decision-Making Process – And How To Fix It. Forbes. Accessed on 1 March 2025. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2022/09/15/how-burnout-affects-your-decision-making-process-and-how-to-fix-it/
8 Pihlaja, M., Tuominen, P.P.A., Peräkylä, J. & Hartikainen, K. M. (2022). Occupational burnout is linked with inefficient executive functioning, elevated average heart rate, and decreased physical activity in daily life – Initial evidence from teaching professionals. Brain Sciences, 12, 1723. Doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12121723
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