When Spitzer hired a hooker, when the governor of South Carolina snuck off to Buenos Aires to see his girlfriend, when Bill Clinton took up with an intern, they were all subject to the occupational hazard that comes with being, as President George W. Bush once described himself, “the decider.” The problem of decision fatigue affects everything from the careers of CEOs to the prison sentences of felons appearing before weary judges. It influences the behavior of everyone, executive and nonexecutive, every day. Yet few people are even aware of it.
