What is the cycle of doom?

The "cycle of doom" refers to the mental exhaustion experienced during decision-making processes, particularly when faced with numerous options. Daniel Gross explains that as you try various permutations of a choice, like booking a flight or hotel, your brain becomes overloaded. Because you can't keep all options in your mind simultaneously, you continuously go back and forth, re-evaluating decisions until you're mentally exhausted. Eventually, you may end up choosing based on recency bias—picking the option that was most recently considered, rather than the best one.

Shane Parrish agrees with this concept and highlights how this mental treadmill leads to suboptimal decision-making 1.