Insight into the hard work of creativity — not just coming up with or considering myriad possibilitys, but deciding which is the one worth pursuing and pruning away the rest
Why is making a determination so taxing? Evidence implicates two important components: commitment and tradeoff resolution. The first is predicated on the notion that committing to a given course requires switching from a state of deliberation to one of implementation. In other words, you have to make a transition from thinking about options to actually following through on a decision. This switch, according to Vohs, requires executive resources. In a parallel investigation, Yale University professor Nathan Novemsky and his colleagues suggest that the mere act of resolving tradeoffs may be depleting. For example, in one study, the scientists show that people who had to rate the attractiveness of different options were much less depleted than those who had to actually make choices between the very same options
from “Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain,” by On Amir, Scientific American, 22 July 2008 :: via Boing Boing