What does it mean that decisions are the most expensive cognitive operations?

Every decision costs attention and energy — systematic frameworks reduce this cost.

Example: You sit down to write a project plan. Before you type a word, you face a cascade: Which format? Who is the audience? How detailed should it be? Should you start from scratch or adapt the last one? Each micro-decision burns the same executive function resources you need for the actual thinking. Thirty minutes later, you've chosen a template and written two sentences. The plan isn't hard. The decisions surrounding the plan are what consumed your capacity.

Try this: Track your decisions for one hour of work. Every time you deliberate — what to work on next, how to phrase something, whether to respond to a message now or later — make a tally mark. At the end of the hour, count the marks. Most people discover 40-70 deliberate decisions per hour of knowledge work. Now circle the ones that actually mattered. The ratio of total decisions to consequential decisions is your decision overhead. The gap between those numbers is exactly where frameworks will save you.