Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Decision Fatigue

What’s the kindest thing someone has done for you?

By Boyd Blundell, Research Director

It was September 5, 2005, somewhere on a highway in southern Oklahoma. It was midafternoon, and about as hot as you would expect Oklahoma to be at that time of year.

We were pulled over to the side of the road because of a flat tire. There was no cellphone service. I opened the back hatch and looked at all the stuff I was going to have to move just to get to the spare tire. Then I looked over at my wife setting up a blanket and snacks for our two little kids, and my brain just went dark. I have no clear memory of the next few hours.

A week earlier, we had left our home in New Orleans to stay with friends while Hurricane Katrina hit the city. We had intended to go back home a few days later, but now the city was flooded. I had no idea when we could go back home—or even if we had a home to go back to.

I made it through the next few hours because I had one word to latch on to: Tulsa. I didn’t know anyone in Tulsa, but it was enough, because my friend Jim had done the kindest thing anyone has done for me.

Jim and I had met in grad school in Boston and been colleagues for a year in Philadelphia. He had contacted me a few days earlier to see where we planned to stay over the next weeks and months. I did not know the answer. Maybe Boston? Maybe back to Ontario?

He suggested Philadelphia as a place to stop and decide and then proceeded to arrange every aspect of the trip. He had friends in Tulsa and other friends in Indianapolis. We never stayed in a hotel. People we had never met helped us get our car repaired and gave us the kind of help you don’t even know you need until you don’t have a home.

This stands out as the kindest thing because Jim understood something very important: in that kind of chaos, the one thing you don’t need is more decisions. He made it simple. Drive from Houston to Tulsa. When you’re ready, drive to Indianapolis. When you’re ready, drive to Philadelphia. Someone will help you each step of the way. It is hard to express how much weight that took off me.

There is a lot of skill involved in being kind to someone in need. Many people had reached out with offers to help, but that just added more decisions, which in some ways made things worse.

Since then, I’ve tried to take the time to really think about what a friend might need before I offer to help. If I can’t come up with something, I communicate my concern and care but try not to put further stress on them.

It is not the easiest balance to find, but it is always worth making the effort. The thought you put in before offering to help is itself a genuine act of care.

Decision Fatigue

You might be interested in