How to overcome decision fatigue during uncertain times
Listen to a Thinkydoers episiode on Strategy During Chaos here.
You know that moment when someone asks about your strategic plan and you think…
"Which version? The one from Q4, the January revision, or the one we're about to scrap again?"
If you've lost track of how many times you’ve had to pivot this year, you're not alone.
In my recent Chaos to Clear workshop, I polled participants about exactly this—and found that most people are updating strategy about once a quarter, with some doing it monthly or more often.
One person's response?
"What strategy?"
It feels to me like we’re all operating in a "shaken snow globe” right now. Zero visibility, little control over the particulate obscuring our view, and we can't wait for the snow to settle to make decisions and move forward. We have to navigate with low visibility while the proverbial snow swirls around us.
The result?
Decision fatigue that leaves even the most strategic thinkers feeling scattered, overwhelmed, and reactive.
But here's what I've learned after working with hundreds of leaders navigating chaos: the problem isn't that you're not “strategic enough.”
The problem is that traditional strategic planning assumes predictability that simply doesn't exist right now.
The Hidden Cost of Overthinking in Uncertain Times
When volatility hits, we tend to fall into two traps—and both are completely normal human responses.
Trap #1: Over-planning.
As humans, we crave control. So when chaos strikes, we might create more and more detailed plans, hoping those plans will insulate us from the uncertainty. What we actually do when we default to this planning instinct is wind up spending a lot of time revising plans instead of continually making progress.
Trap #2: Strategy abandonment.
We get so overwhelmed that we focus on what's urgent—firefighting our day-to-day emergencies—without keeping our strategy on track. There's so much going on that we let our strategic priorities go to deal with what feels immediately pressing.
I'll be honest: I'm definitely in the overthinking, over-planning category. Which is partly why the practices I'm sharing here and in my workshops evolved in the first place.
Both traps are survival mechanisms. When everything feels chaotic, detailed planning feels like control, and urgent tasks feel manageable. But here's the real cost: we're either spending all our time planning (and re-planning) or we're abandoning the strategic work that actually moves us forward.
The hidden cost isn't just the time we're spending. It's decision fatigue that compounds daily, leaving us more reactive and less strategic exactly when we need to be thinking most clearly.
Why Your Brain Craves Control (And Why That's the Problem)
Let me ask you something:
How many of you keep a to-do list?
(I'm betting everyone reading this just nodded.)
Now, how often do you actually finish your to-do list?
Yeah, I know.
Making a to-do list gives us a feeling of control. And if we actually had control, we'd finish that list every single day. But the best we have in any given situation is an illusion of control — as humans, we crave certainty, we crave control, and it’s really hard for us to accept that we operate in a world where we can influence what happens around us (sometimes) but we really, truly, can’t control it.
This is the fundamental problem with how we approach decision-making during uncertain times. We're wired to create plans based on predictions and assumptions about the future. Those plans give us a feeling of control, and once we make those plans we become attached to them — a host of cognitive biases kick in to keep us focused on doing what we planned (whether or not it’s yielding actual results or progress).
In “unprecedented times” like these, we have to embrace and accept that we don't actually control all the variables.
Traditional strategic planning assumes predictability. It assumes you can write a three-year strategic plan (or even a six- or ten-year plan) and then get to work on achieving it. (When I ask workshop participants how confident they are in their long-range strategic plans written more than a week ago, the responses range from one outlier who was "pretty confident" to a majority of participants just nervously laughing).
The reality is that constant disruption is the new normal. There's no amount of activity-based planning that will give you a plan you can execute with 100% confidence, simply because of all the uncontrolled variables we're all living with.
But we can’t wait for stability—that leaves opportunity on the table. We have to navigate while the snow is still swirling in our metaphorical snow globe.
Simple Strategic Frameworks Can Cut Through Decision Overwhelm
When everything feels urgent, we need frameworks that help us distinguish between what's actually important and what's just loud. I've developed three tactical approaches that work independently or together to cut through the noise — and you can learn and practice all three in just one hour, in my Chaos to Clear Workshop.
Strategic Anchors: Your North Star in the Storm
Think of strategic anchors as those foundational elements of your strategy that stay true regardless of what's happening around you. They're the pillars that hold up your mission and vision—the most enduring, important elements you must maintain focus on, connected to your reason for being.
What’s different about strategic anchors, versus the mission and vision you’ve already created? Most mission statements and strategic plans are very growth-focused. When growth has to take a backseat to sustainability or even survival, those foundational elements might not fit the moment we're in. Strategic anchors give us decision-making guardrails that work whether we're scaling up or hunkering down.
For example, my strategic anchor is simple: "We help people suffer less and achieve more reward while pursuing important change at work." Whether I'm in a growth phase or managing through uncertainty, this anchor guides every decision I make. It fits on a sticky note, which is the test—if your strategic anchor doesn't fit on a sticky note, it's probably too complex to actually use when decisions get hard.
Want to develop your own strategic anchors? We dive deep into this framework in the Clarity in Chaos workshop, where you'll identify what stays constant for you regardless of market conditions.
The "What Matters Most" Reset
It may sound too simple to be helpful, but the question:
“What Matters Most right now?”
is a powerful one. (I dive into why and how in the actual workshop, but I am getting too wordy here already!)
The "To-Done" List Strategy
Okay, this is my favorite framework, and I'm going to walk you through it because it's a game-changer for decision fatigue.
We talked about your endless “To Do” list already. Why do we create them, if we don’t finish them?
Making a to-do list gives us a feeling of control—an illusion of control. We get a little dopamine hit every time we cross something off.
(Who else here falls into the “put things on the list just to cross them off” club? Just me?)
The "To Done” list is different.
Instead of asking "What do I need to do?" which yields an unprioritized list of everything you think might be important (and which can quickly overwhelm you), try asking:
"What can I complete to a point of generating value?"
This is really hard for those of us wired for perfectionism (most people in my orbit), but here's why it matters: typically, we operate with these long thinking and design cycles, and then we get into doing. The problem? For that whole upfront period, we're dealing with anxiety. We're in a rapidly changing world, trying to make predictions that don't hold.
The alternative is condensing our thinking and planning, getting that MVP out, and having multiple learning and optimizing cycles back to back. This shrinks the time we spend in anxiety and gets us into information gathering and curiosity-based refinement faster.
Ready to practice these frameworks yourself?
Join our Clarity in Chaos Mini-Workshop where you'll work through these exact exercises with guided support. Transform your decision overwhelm into strategic clarity in just 90 minutes.
Join the Clarity in Chaos Mini-Workshop →
The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything
Here's the fundamental shift we need to make: instead of creating plans based on predictions and assumptions about the future (which gives us a false feeling of control), we need to build resilient strategies that create progress regardless of our operating conditions.
This means moving from our natural human desire for control and certainty to thinking like scientists.
Instead of trying to predict and control, we architect experiments. We focus on progress AND learning—both are wins.
When we're thinking about growth, we're setting stretch goals into territories we might influence but don't control. In down cycles, it might or might not be about growth, but there's still opportunity we want to capitalize on.
This isn't about lowering standards or abandoning ambition. It's about channeling your strategic energy more effectively. Instead of spending cognitive bandwidth trying to predict an unpredictable environment, you can create approaches that generate value whether your predictions pan out or not.
Strategic thinking and strategic planning isn't about control or predicting the future—it's about creating clarity for yourself and your collaborators that can withstand the chaos we're operating in.
Want even deeper strategic clarity?
Join me for the Strategic Clarity Workshop Live on June 11-12, where we'll build your complete strategic framework using these principles—and I’ll include advanced techniques for sustainable decision-making during uncertain times.
This isn't just theory or being talked at. This live, two half-day workshop is an immersive working session where I work right alongside you as we build our strategic plans and strategic goals that are actually designed for chaotic conditions like these.
Reserve Your Spot for June 11-12 →
To wrap up:
Nobody here needs reminding that uncertainty isn't going away anytime soon, and we’ve got years yet before any hope of “precedented times” resuming. The volatility, the rapid changes, the need to revise plans—this is our operating environment for the foreseeable future.
But that doesn't mean you abandon strategic thinking. It means you get better and smarter at it.
Strategic thinking isn't about having all the answers or controlling all the variables. It's about creating clarity that helps you and your team make better decisions, faster, even when you can't predict what's coming next.
These frameworks—strategic anchors, centering what matters most, and building your to-done list—aren't just tools for getting through chaotic times. They're practices that make you more effective regardless of conditions. They help you suffer less and achieve more while pursuing the important change that only you can create.
The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty. The goal is to build your capacity to create progress within it.
From Disengaged and Demotivated to High Impact
Strategy coach (and goal nerd), Sara Lobkovich helps organizations and individuals set clear goals, stay focused, and build cultures of growth, learning, and high performance.
