# Rationality fatigue

The exhaustion that changed the way the world decides.

- Columnist: [Ricardo Figueira](https://ceoone.com.br/en/columnist/ricardo-figueira)
- Published: October 19, 2026
- Address: https://ceoone.com.br/en/article/rationality-fatigue
- Em português: https://ceoone.com.br/artigo/a-fadiga-da-racionalidade.md

![A bronze statuette of Rodin's The Thinker on a wooden shelf](https://pub-b80e49b2737940b3ab5d3f20d0578192.r2.dev/artigos/a-fadiga-da-racionalidade-foto.webp)

Photo: Quilia/Unsplash

## Key points

- Research by Matthew Botvinick at Princeton showed that we tend to choose the path that requires less thinking; people who make thousands of decisions a day come to treat thinking as a cost.
- The author argues that companies should be chosen for how welcome they make people feel, not for their arguments: in the product, the service, the space, the price and the culture, across every department.
- In a survey of more than 15,000 people in nine countries, more than half would pay more for experiences that simplify their lives; in NPS Benchmarking, Lindt has led since 2021, with Apple among the top.

When was the last time you bought something because a salesperson rationally knocked out your prefrontal cortex?

Do you remember a salesperson who, instead of trying to win the argument, tried to take a weight off your shoulders when you needed it most?

And when was the last time you walked into a place that worked like a decompression chamber and, without noticing, ended up in another world, coming back with bags full of little pieces of that world as a bond? Many people think this is marketing. It isn't. It's biology.

Especially today, when a human being already makes thousands of decisions a day, from the alarm clock to the pillow. And this tiredness doesn't go away with a night's sleep. It is a fatigue of rationality that has become a state, a new normal. And so the old slogan “don't make me think” stops being a design mantra and becomes a rule for life.

As a result, the human brain has involuntarily come to count thinking as a very high cost, and today it only wants to pay that price when it is essential. At Princeton University, Matthew Botvinick showed that we tend to choose the path that requires less thinking, without even noticing. Years later, Google brought him into its artificial intelligence lab. And other lines of research show that we only go back to thinking rigorously when we know someone will hold us accountable for the decision.

Everything else is decided by a sense of welcome: functional, emotional and cultural.

Nature has been doing this for millions of years. A flower doesn't need to chase the bee. It doesn't shout, doesn't interrupt, doesn't argue. It offers color, scent, nectar: a welcome. The bee comes because it wants to, stays because it's good, and leaves carrying the pollen, which fertilizes other flowers, which bear fruit, which feed other lives. Nobody convinced anybody there. It was a generous exchange that spread on its own. This is biological pollination: a bond that multiplies without having to be forced down anyone's throat.

That salesperson who took the weight off your shoulders was a flower. So was that decompression portal that took you to another world. And you, without noticing, left carrying the pollen: you came back, told someone, recommended it.

In all of us, the most powerful nectar is neuroaesthetic stimulus. And that is biology too. Neuroaesthetics is not decoration. It is everything that offers us elevation, of every kind. Some call it excellence, and it is. But excellence is not the privilege of a few, nor does it depend on technique or price. Faced with this elevation, the body anticipates the achievement before it even happens. It anticipates the purchase, or the use. And, as a result, the best of all worlds: repeat business.

It is biological comfort in the most literal sense: the greatest dopamine-driven welcome of all. Peter Drucker already sensed this in 1973, when he wrote that the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product sells itself. Philip Kotler, had he embraced the same lens, would have cut short many years of marketing theories, version 3.0, 4.0 or 25.0, because neuroscience solved the equation of the phenomenon in a much simpler, clearer and more timeless way.

That is why the science of pollination becomes a lens for the whole company: from HR to R&D, from reception to the bonus policy, from accounting to legal. That is where the most important factor in this whole conversation comes from: the company's coherence and its interdisciplinary focus.

In companies, no department alone can create the ecosystem capable of producing a flower. Pollination doesn't fit in one area or in a media budget. It happens in the product, in the service, in the space, in the price, in the culture and even in the way you say no.

And people already naturally reward the companies that have understood this. In a survey of more than 15,000 people in nine countries, more than half said they would pay more for simpler experiences, or experiences that simplify their lives. In other words: paying more to think less. And the stock market itself confirms it: since 2009, the shares of these companies have performed far better than the market average. Being spared from having to reason has become a service, and that is what people are willing to pay more for.

Incredible as it may seem, the most recommended brands in Brazil are not service companies. In NPS Benchmarking, which evaluates more than 600 brands, the leader since 2021 has been Lindt, with Apple among the top. It almost sounds like a metaphor: at the top, a quality chocolate company, perhaps the world's biggest dopamine factory. Again, it's biology. Right behind, aesthetic products made of wires, solder, screws and chips, which nobody sees that way. Totally focused on quality and much more expensive than their competitors. No argument can compete with that. And it shows in the P&L: selling 13% of the world's phones, Apple once took 75% of all the industry's profit.

And it starts on the inside. Jony Ive, who led Apple's design for decades, kept a ritual: every Friday morning, someone on the team was chosen to make breakfast for everyone, with a budget set aside for it. It was an experience of care: through their own creativity, the person showed colleagues how much they cared about them. That was life for the people who created everything from ordinary power cables to more complex, high-ticket products. Those who learn to welcome the people close to them learn to welcome those far away. Pollination starts at the roots.

The business now is to work with human nature, not against it. To be more generous with the people you serve, from purpose to processes. And that means being more profitable: because it is what lets you be chosen without having to convince, duel with or keep interrupting people.

Embracing this is not giving up rigor. It is applying rigor to what actually moves people. It is broadening the yardstick. For years, companies learned to measure, and to value, what is easy to count: clicks, reach, leads, almost always bought. Opening your mind beyond the nature of that yardstick means gaining a vision capable of building what no metric measures: the reach of the welcome your company gives to those who already choose it and to those who can still be pollinated. That reach cannot just be rented. It has to be built by you. Because this welcome is an embrace, and that embrace is your preference capital.

Now you must be thinking: you got to the end of the article and didn't talk about AI?

And my answer is: as the English say, “first things first”. Before we talk about machines, we need to understand people. There will be plenty of room for AI in the conversations to come.

CEO ONE · https://ceoone.com.br