Why Decisions Feel Harder Than They Used To
In our conversations, I find that what leaders and founders think is the challenge usually isn't. Bear with me on this!
A lot of the time people come to coaching with a specific question or an area they want addressing or are finding challenging. Another reason might be about trying to work out next steps, or outgrowing a role or relationship. This might involve a situation that clashes with their own values where they feel trapped or discordant. Someone I worked with (with permission) described spending years wondering "do I want to stay, or do I not want to stay" in their situation. That same question kept returning year after year, month after month.
Underneath almost all of it is something that has not quite been addressed. A decision that keeps coming back not because there is not enough information but because the underlying real question has not been asked.
For over thirty years I have seen this pattern come up consistently across different industries. The external environment has genuinely got harder with more decisions, more complexity, more speed, more self-doubt and more pressure. It is very real. Despite that, the decisions that matter are not about the external environment or needing more information. They are about something else.
The volume has genuinely increased
A global study of more than 14,000 employees and business leaders across 17 countries found that 74% of people say the number of decisions they make every day has increased ten times over the last three years. Ten times. (Oracle Decision Dilemma Study, 2023.)
One client put it plainly (with permission): "Everything can potentially feel like there's too much choice."
That was before AI accelerated the options further.
More complex roles, faster-moving environments, constant information flow and AI tools that generate yet more options to evaluate mean the work of filtering, assessing and committing has increased alongside the information. More information does not make decisions easier. In many cases it makes them harder. This point came up directly in a recent roundtable of business owners I hosted yesterday - it was one of the first things the room recognised.
Has AI added a layer, not removed one?
There is a reasonable expectation that AI tools will reduce the decision load by doing more of the cognitive work. The reality has been more complicated.
When outputs can be regenerated in seconds, there is less pressure to commit. Why move forward with one direction when several more can be produced just as easily? Knowing when to stop and when something is good enough has become its own challenge. (AlphaSense, April 2026.)
Research by EY found that 54% of senior business leaders said they feel they are failing as a leader amid AI's rapid growth. That finding points to something specific: the tools are moving faster than most leaders have had time to work out what they think about them.
Research from the Human Clarity Institute's 2025 dataset found that people who experience strain when checking whether the AI results are accurate are roughly three times more likely to also find it tricky to direct AI effectively. Using AI thoughtfully takes real mental energy. It is a shortcut to faster output but in practice it is not a shortcut to clearer thinking - those are not the same thing.
This is exactly where good coaching has a role, helping you stay clear about what you actually think, so you use these tools rather than let them take over your thinking.
When your thinking gets depleted: decision fatigue
Decision fatigue is a term that is getting more discussed so worth mentioning here.
Studies have found that prolonged decision-making leads to decreased activity in the part of the brain associated with judgment and executive function. In a 2024 study, physicians were significantly more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics later in their clinical shifts. (Nature Neuroscience, 2023; JAMA Network, 2024.)
Not all evidence is pointing the same way. Another study using large-scale field data from healthcare professionals making multiple complex judgments over time found no credible evidence for decision fatigue in that context. (Communications Psychology, 2025.)
The reality is that sustained pressure affects thinking quality, and the conditions you think in matter. A lot. Adequate thinking space, clear priorities and time to actually reflect are not luxuries. They are where good decisions are made from. If those conditions are missing, the quality of your thinking suffers, and so does everything that follows from it. Something worth paying attention to, and something that coaching directly addresses.
When it is not the volume but what is underneath
The decisions that take the most energy tend to be the ones where something underneath has not been faced or addressed.
This can show up as doing other work instead as a way of avoiding the real decision. A leader who commissions more research, holds more meetings, gathers more perspectives - they know what they think but, consciously or not, are building enough support around a decision they have already made, so that if it goes wrong, they are not alone in having made it. The thoroughness is genuine but the reason for it may be doing a different job.
To quote a client (with permission): "I could do this, oh but I could do that, but oh if I do that that's scary. My brain is just a complete disorganised muddle with it all."
That muddle often has less to do with the options and more to do with not yet being ready to commit to a direction.
Another pattern that can come up is arriving with the right question but it turning out to be touching the surface of a deeper one. The presenting question might be about a hire, a restructure or a change in direction. When explored further it is actually about who they are now, what they value and where they are heading. If the underlying question is not addressed the same situation tends to come back, in one form or another.
None of this is about anything being wrong with the person… it is just human. It is about the kind of thinking that these moments require, and that is different from the thinking that most people have space and support for on their own.
What it looks like when things get clearer
Good thinking space makes decisions that have been going around in circles much clearer and easier to start to resolve.
In practice the thinking underneath surfaces and the way forward becomes clearer. Not because the circumstances changed but because the right question finally got asked. The decision that felt heavy starts to move. The one that kept coming back tends to close. Often faster than people expect.
For some people, a single focused session is all that requires.
The Unblur Intensive is a 90-minute one-to-one specifically designed for this: to get underneath the presenting question, find what is actually there and agree the two or three most useful next steps, with enough clarity to act without adding more to the week. Some people use it once and that is enough.
Others find it is the beginning of something longer.
For those where the pattern runs deeper (or has been running for a while), the six-session coaching programme gives more time and more space to work through it properly. Both start with a free discovery call.
What tends to actually help
Three things come up consistently, both in practice and in what the research points to.
Protecting your thinking space deliberately. The Center for Creative Leadership found that senior leaders spend an average of 72 hours per week in work-related activity. The question worth asking is not how much of that is too much, but how much of it is drawing on the thinking that actually needs protecting. The most important decisions rarely get that space, because the urgent ones fill it first.
Reducing the decisions that genuinely need your judgment. Many end up with you because the structures around them have not been designed to handle them. That is solvable, but it requires stepping back from the load long enough to see it clearly.
Having someone in your corner who has no stake in what you decide. Not someone giving advice and not a framework. A thinking partner with enough cross-sector experience to read what is actually happening and help you find the real question underneath the presenting one.
In summary
Decisions feel harder than they used to because things have genuinely got harder. More volume, more speed, more pressure, more options.
That is real.
The decisions that keep coming back, though, are not usually a volume issue. They are about requiring more clarity and respond to a different kind of thinking than more analysis, more information or more time.
If that is genuinely where you are, a free discovery call is a good place to start. A private conversation to see whether coaching would be useful.
If it would, we will take it from there. If it would not, I will tell you that too.
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To book a discovery call email penny@katherineashmore.com
If this resonated, these articles sit alongside it: How Do You Know When You Need a Coach and Where Your Energy Goes, Your Identity Follows.
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References
Oracle / Seth Stephens-Davidowitz: The Decision Dilemma, global study of 14,000+ employees and business leaders, 17 countries, 2023. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-study-70-of-business-leaders-would-prefer-a-robot-to-make-their-decisions-301799591.html
Nature Neuroscience: Prolonged decision-making and decreased prefrontal cortex activity, 2023. https://www.monitask.com/business-glossary/decision-fatigue/
JAMA Network Open: Physician antibiotic prescribing and decision fatigue, 2024. https://www.monitask.com/business-glossary/decision-fatigue/
Hughes, J. et al: No evidence for decision fatigue using large-scale field data from healthcare. Communications Psychology, Nature, February 2025. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00207-8
EY AI Pulse Survey: Senior business leaders and AI leadership confidence, Q4 2024. https://www.ey.com/en_us/newsroom/2024/12/ey-research-artificial-intelligence-investments-set-to-remain-strong-in-2025-but-senior-leaders-recognize-emerging-risks
AlphaSense: AI Decision Fatigue, Navigating an Age of Infinite Choices, April 2026. https://www.alpha-sense.com/resources/research-articles/ai-decision-fatigue/
Human Clarity Institute: Cognitive Load, Fatigue and Decision Offloading, 2025. https://humanclarityinstitute.com/data/ai-fatigue-decision-2025/
Center for Creative Leadership: Senior Leader Time Research. https://www.ccl.org
