If you’re in charge of a household or raising children or recovering from a relationship ending, you don’t have a lot of extra mental space. This is when decision fatigue comes into play and you find yourself overwhelmed by everything by the end of the day and ordering pizza for dinner but making someone else pick the toppings.

The stereotype of women not being able to pick where they want to go out to eat is a legit thing based on the science and psychology of decision fatigue. We’ve all experienced this – you spend all day making good decisions and picking options and buying groceries and making plans and by the end of the day you have no ability to make choices anymore and you just pick the easiest answer to get out of a given scenario.

This can have minor consequences – you order takeout every night because you’re just too tired to decide what to cook – or bigger consequences – you make decisions against your own long-term interests because you just wanted the easiest option right now. We see this scenario play out in movies and sometimes realities of police interrogations. Officers badger the suspect with so many questions for so long that the suspect will say anything just to get it over – even if that something is a false confession.

So how do we fight decision fatigue? Make the biggest decisions in the morning. This is literally the easiest answer – when you have a fatigue issue, do the most work when you are the freshest. If you don’t know what you’re having for dinner, decide in the morning. If you need to buy groceries, make the list over your morning coffee not browsing the store after work. If you’re meeting with your lawyer to talk about a difficult divorce issue, meet with them in the morning.

The more you can frontload difficult decisions toward the earlier part of your day, the more likely you are to be able to take them in stride.

Similarly, remember that others you’re dealing with in the latter part of the day are probably dealing with their own decision fatigue. If you’re presenting complicated options to people at the end of the work day, probably they’re going to be a bit overwhelmed by the decision. But if you have that same meeting with them bright and early Monday morning, they may have a much better ability to process and decide those matters.

Pay attention to your decision fatigue. Postpone things that need more time and awareness to decide. Front-load the decisions you can or at least parse them down so the decision is as straightforward as can be when the time comes.

Be kind to yourself. Make others decide when that’s a realistic option. And if you have to make your own decisions do it early in the day when you’re as refreshed as possible.