I Make Strategic Decisions All Day. So Why Can’t I Decide What’s for Dinner?
- Tanesha Ford
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
The “What’s for Dinner?” Breakdown Is Not About Dinner.
Paper or plastic?
Tea or coffee?
Debit or credit?
On a normal day, those are harmless decisions.
On a day where you’ve already:
Navigated a board member’s concern about ticket sales
Reworked messaging to better reflect your equity commitments
Approved creative for three different audiences
Reforecasted a marketing budget that never felt realistic to begin with
“Fries or salad?” feels like a personal attack.
I’m in a season right now. Planning a wedding. Building a business. Working full-time in strategic marketing and communications. Parenting six pets (not on purpose). Making decisions all day that affect real people, real budgets, real reputations.
And by 6:00 p.m., I cannot decide what font to use on a grocery list.
In steps AI.
But this isn’t a tech story. This is a decision fatigue story, and in nonprofit arts organizations, especially small ones, it’s everywhere.
Decision Fatigue Isn’t a Buzzword. It’s a Brain Limit.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, decision fatigue is the phenomenon where the more decisions you make over the course of a day, the more mentally and emotionally depleted you become. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s an acute state that impacts executive functioning and judgment (June 1, 2023, Health Conditions/Mental Health).
And here’s the part that hits home for our sector:
Decision fatigue is more likely when:
You make a lot of decisions daily
Your decisions impact other people
You’re navigating uncertainty
You have perfectionist tendencies
That’s… nonprofit arts work.
Add to that what we know from sector data: women make up the majority of the nonprofit arts workforce, yet men are more likely to hold top leadership roles and are paid more, especially in larger institutions (Candid). That “glass escalator” dynamic means many women are carrying significant decision-making weight without equivalent authority, pay, or relief.
So when we talk about burnout, we cannot ignore this layer.
This is both exhaustion AND structural.
Small Teams Don’t Just Execute. They Interpret.
In large institutions, someone sets the strategy, and someone else implements it.
In small and mid-sized arts organizations?
You are interpreting everything.
✅ The mission.
✅ The funder language.
✅ The board’s anxiety.
✅ The audience mood.
✅ The community’s lived realities.
✅ The equity commitments you genuinely care about honoring.
Every social post becomes positioning.
Every program description feels like it must simultaneously:
Sell tickets
Advance justice
Center community
Satisfy funders
Reflect your values
That’s not “posting on Instagram.”
That’s cognitive labor layered with moral weight.
When everything feels high stakes, your brain never rests.
“Just Decide” Is a Privileged Instruction.
We love to tell nonprofit leaders to be decisive.
But decisive based on what?
Small teams often lack:
Clean, reliable data
Research capacity
Staff to test and iterate
Financial cushion for being wrong
So what looks like indecision is often careful risk calculation in a low-margin environment.
And let’s be honest: the consequences feel disproportionate.
If a campaign underperforms in a well-resourced institution, it’s a learning moment.
If it underperforms in a two-person marketing department tied to earned revenue goals?
It feels existential.
That’s not drama. That’s math.
Strategy Reduces Decisions. Chaos Multiplies Them.
This is the moment of truth.
If your organization doesn’t have a clear strategic anchor, you will relitigate every choice.
👀 Should we discount tickets?
👀 Should we pivot the messaging?
👀 Should we add another performance?
👀 Should we rewrite the grant narrative again?
Without agreed-upon filters, everything is negotiable.
And when everything is negotiable, everything is exhausting.
A strong strategy doesn’t eliminate hard choices, but it does eliminate unnecessary ones.
Burnout isn’t always about workload. Sometimes it’s about the absence of a decision filter
AI Is Not the Hero. It’s a Pressure Valve.
Here’s where I’m going to be clear.
AI isn’t replacing your judgment or setting your values or doing your job of leadership.
But it can remove low-stakes decisions.
It can draft.
It can suggest.
It can narrow options.
When your brain has spent all day making consequential choices, removing ten micro-decisions matters.
Not because we’re lazy but because we’re finite.
Decision Fatigue Is Acute.
If you’re experiencing chronic indecision, persistent brain fog, or daily overwhelm, that may be something deeper: burnout, anxiety, or depression.
And that deserves care, not productivity hacks.
But for many nonprofit leaders right now?
It’s the accumulation.
Hundreds of micro-decisions layered on top of high-stakes moral ones.
The Question I’m Sitting With
What decisions are you making repeatedly that could be anchored once?
What filters haven’t been articulated?
What are you interpreting alone that should be clarified collectively?
Small teams aren’t tired because they’re incapable.
They’re tired because they’re making leadership-level decisions all day without leadership-level support.
And that’s not a personal failing.
It’s an organizational design issue.
Sit with that before you ask yourself to “just push through.”
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