choices

Decision Fatigue is Real – Let’s Make it Easier

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Decision fatigueTired of struggling to make the “right” choice?

If you’ve ever stared into the refrigerator hoping that a dinner idea will magically appear, or struggled to decide which task to tackle first off of your to-do list-you are not alone. It’s not because you don’t know what to do, and it’s not laziness, it’s your brain “waving a little white flag, especially if you’re juggling ADHD, high expectations, or have a habit of putting everyone else’s needs first. The more decisions you have to make in a day—big or small—the more drained you feel.” 1  That’s decision fatigue.

Decision Fatigue

Every day we wake up with a certain amount of mental energy and each decision or choice we make uses up some of that energy. So, as the day goes on and our decisions start to add up, our mental energy decreases. That’s when decisions become harder to make and so you might put off making them, or feel stuck, or make a hasty decision you’ll regret later.

Give Your Brain Space to Breathe

The first step is to reduce the number of choices you need to make each day. That will free up some of that decision making energy for you to use on the more important things and give your brain space to breathe. Think about how many decisions you are making just to get up and out in the morning. (Ex. What time to get up, what to do first, what to wear, what to eat, etc.)

How to reduce the number of decisions? Simplify the choices you have to make early in the day and create routines that become automatic habits that no longer require mental energy.

Where to Start?

Start with the easy things that don’t take much brain power at all that you can do the night before. Things like deciding what you will wear, what you will eat for breakfast, what you need to bring with you, etc. If you set out what you can, then that part of your morning will go smoother.

The next phase would be to simplify what you can by planning ahead. Where do you feel the frustration building? For me, it was often around dinner. I was all out of decision making power by the time I was supposed to start working on dinner. I would stare into the fridge or pantry and hope something would jump out – it rarely did. Now, I use a blank calendar on the pantry door to write in the meals for the next week. Usually, it goes from Thursday to Wednesday so that I can get what I need on Thursday at the grocery store. When I am creating the menu, I put anything that I might need on the Alexa shopping list. It’s not perfect but it does have an added advantage….if I am not home or am on a call, anyone else can check the menu and get started on dinner.

Other ideas you might want to try is to designate certain days of the week for certain activities like admin, meetings, grocery shopping, errands, laundry, etc. That way you know when something will be taken care of and don’t have to try and fit it in when it becomes urgent on a very busy day.

Creating routines can also help to take the strain off of your brain. Yes, it can be boring to do exactly the same things in the same order every day – but you are saving your decision-making power for more important decisions later in the day. A morning routine and an evening routine would cover the basics but you can also create an end of the work day routine, a weekly reset routine, or even a bedtime routine with the kids and be instilling great life skill habits in the process. Once these routines become autopilot, your brain can relax and save it’s energy for more important things.

Take a look at the times of the day or the things that seem to cause more stress in your day and figure out if a routine would help, or if you can simplify it or do it the night before or even delegate it. The choice is yours. If you feel like you’re just “burnt” at the end of the day, then it’s time to also look at your self-care habits to make sure you are getting enough sleep, exercise and healthy meals. After all, you are worth it.

Take 5 minutes today to set up one “go-to” or default option – a quick breakfast option or an outfit you feel great in, whatever it is, set it up and try it out. Let us know on our facebook page, the impact it has.

*1 Chatgpt definition

Time Management vs. Choice Management

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time or choice

Time management, what does that mean to you? For me, it is my ability to manage the available time I have to get what needs to be done, done. Notice, I said it is MY ability to manage – myself really and manage my choices. We really can’t “manage” time as we have no control over it. It keeps going on its own whether we want it to or not. However, the choices we make of how to use our time can have a huge impact on our productivity, as well as, on how we feel about ourselves and our lives. So, what is choice management?

Choice management is taking time to look at all the options/tasks/choices you have and actually choosing your priorities given the time you have. There are lots of things that “should” be done, but are they really the important stuff or just the easy stuff? Estimate how long you think things will take before you decide if it’s a realistic task to take on.

Choose the top three priorities to begin with and set clear boundaries around the time you will work on them. Don’t wait for the deadlines to get closer as although deadlines help provide a sense of urgency, they often bring extra stress if you miscalculate the time needed to complete it.

Five Ways to Save Time

  • Use the Pomodoro method
  • Time blocking
  • Task batching
  • Create systems and routines to “keep up”
  • Organize and declutter the extras out of your life

It comes down to having to make choices because the reality is you probably can’t do it all. So rather than getting stressed, why not choose wisely and ask yourself…”is this important enough for me to use “x” hours of my day to do? Then figure out which method above, works best for you. Watch out for things that can eat up your time, like distractions, multitasking and not having a plan.

The Pomodoro Method

The Pomodoro method breaks your work time into four, 25-minute blocks of time with a 5-minute break in between each block. The short time frame tricks the brain into thinking the task is more urgent since the clock is ticking. It helps to know that you only have to work on that one “challenging or boring” task for 25 minutes and then you can take a break.

The one thing I have found to help increase it’s effectiveness is to have other people know what I am working on in that block. This body doubling technique also adds accountability to the tasks and helps to keep me on track. If you’d like to give it a try, feel free to join us for Work It Wednesday from 10am-12pm ET via zoom. (Email me for link). At the end, you are encouraged to celebrate your accomplishments and appreciate your productivity (and take a longer break).

Create Systems and Routines

We all want to work “smarter” because that makes things easier on us. Creating systems and routines is a great way to do that. Time blocking and task batching are examples of systems you can use, if they work for you. However, time management is not just about work tasks; you probably also have “home” tasks some of which occur daily.

Setting up systems and/or routines for those things can save you time and stress. For example, if there is no routine of cleaning up the kitchen after dinner (or at least before going to bed) then the morning becomes more of a hassle as you dodge last night’s dirty dishes and cluttered counters trying to get everyone out the door on time. Not to mention the extra time it takes to get dried food off.

Routines work well for weekly tasks too. Pick a day for specific things, like meal planning, grocery shopping, and laundry. Why wait until you have no clothes and there are 6 loads to do when you can keep up by doing laundry once or twice during the week. Much easier to put clothes away if it is manageable.

Organize and Declutter

Lastly, but most importantly, take the time to organize and declutter. Out of all the things you can do, this may save you the most time and frustration. We’ve all wasted time searching for things, things that either didn’t get put back in their “home” or they didn’t have a home to begin with. Your home should work for you not against you.

Create organization so that you know where the things you use daily and weekly belong. Don’t organize so you can stack more stuff into a space. Let the space determine how much can go in there and reduce your inventory. The bigger the load of laundry the longer it takes to get it to its final destination. If your clothes don’t fit in the closet or dresser once they are all clean, then (I’ll be direct) maybe you have too many clothes. Think of how much time you are using/forfeiting to laundry.

Things you use often, should be easy to get to. Why should the big lobster pot take up an entire cabinet when you only use it once or twice a year? It shouldn’t. Make life simpler by clearing counters of appliances and knick knacks you don’t use weekly. You might think it only takes a minute to move things out of the way so you can work, but those minutes add up. You are choosing to use them clearing space when you could be using them for yourself and your family.

Think about the choices you make each day. Yes, it would be wonderful to be able to do all the things we want and need to do but, there are so many options and opportunities that it is impossible to do it all. So, “choose wisely, grasshopper” as a famous TV Kung Fu master once said. Or maybe you’re inspired by Yoda’s line, “do or do not. There is no try.”  Whatever “method” you use for saving time is just one piece of the puzzle, it is the choices you make all day, every day that provides the frame work. Choose what matters to you.

Choices, Choices, Choices

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CEleanor-Roosevelt-In-the-long-runhoices….choices are all around us. We make choices consciously and unconsciously all day long. From the
moment we wake up we are making choices about, what to wear, what to eat, where to pick up coffee, which priority to work on at work. Not to mention the choices in the media, on FaceBook, at the grocery store, etc. We are literally bombarded by choices.

What if you could reduce the number of choices you have to make? You would free up working memory space that just might help you make a better decision about something that is important to you. When your working memory is full (it can only hold so much), it lets go of information. We have no control really of what it lets go of. This is also why teens often think they have studied enough, but end up not getting the grades they are capable of.

If we look at all the choices we have we can suffer from decision paralysis, or making the quickest or easiest decision but not necessarily the “best” or “most right” decision for ourselves. Have you ever made a decision/choice that you later regretted or wished you had thought about longer? Is your willpower being drained? Are you moving in the direction of your dreams or are your ever-changing choices getting in the way?

Then it is time to discover your “non-negotiables.” Non-negotiables are those choices/decisions you have made ahead of time and will stick to. You no longer have to even think about them. It is easiest, according to Darren Hardy of Success magazine to start with the things you won’t tolerate or do. Make the decision/choice now before you need it and you can focus on the more important choices. If you made a New Year’s Resolution this year to lose weight for example, and have already given up, then maybe it’s time for a non-negotiable choice of no cookies or 30 minutes of movement a day, or make bedtime a non-negotiable, or being late a non-negotiable. You get the idea, think of how it would change your life and eliminate the drain on your will power. Isn’t time you kept those promises you make to yourself?

Think about how having non-negotiable decisions made ahead of time could effect your teen. What if not completing homework was just non-negotiable? Or studying for at least an hour was “non-negotiable?” You get the idea….we could all benefit from having some non-negotiables before we are faced with another choice.