Decision Fatigue is killing your willpower.
How to simplify your mind and schedule
I’ve jokingly said that my tag line in life is “so I was listening to this podcast…”. I love a good podcast. All that free inspiration and education and entertainment all at my fingertips! It’s a little addicting. I get a lot of my inspiration from some of my favorite podcasts and then I organize all my thoughts and bring it to you here on the Reclaimed blog.
The last couple of weeks I’ve been listening to and reading about the idea that as busy moms (and people in general) we are becoming weary by the constant decisions we are required to make all. day. long.
This term called “Decision Fatigue‘ is the idea that we make so many choices throughout our day that it is actually exhausting our mind and body and leaving us either making poor quality choices as the day goes on or shutting down and not making any choices at all. Does the whole “what do you want for dinner” conversation ring a bell?
I read a study that said that the average person makes 35,000 decisions each day. Many of those are conscious choices like what to eat, what to wear, what to tackle first on our list, allow the kids to have a treat or not and tons more. Then we have thousands of subconscious decisions each day. Turn right or left, stop at the yellow or go through, Coke or Pepsi. Our minds make decisions for us without us even realizing it.
An article from Coming of Age says this:
According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness. From the beating of our hearts to pushing the grocery cart and not smashing into the kitty litter, we rely on something that is called the adaptive unconscious, which is all the ways that our brains understand the world that the mind and the body must negotiate.
Oh…so that’s why!
It’s no wonder why we feel exhausted and overwhelmed when our kids ask for something at 7 pm and we simply do not have the capacity to decide so instead we get frustrated and tend to lose our temper. Or our spouse wants to talk finances at 10 pm after the kids go to bed and you’re staring at them like your lost in space and can’t compute the question they are trying to ask you!
At the end of the day, I always feel like I am at a battle with my willpower and the more I’ve learned about decision fatigue, it’s more likely that I am simply worn out and unable to make good choices because my brain is tired darn it!!!
So I went searching for more input on HOW to avoid decision fatigue and declutter my always busy mind.
How do we keep ourselves from having decision fatigue in the first place?
I was on the phone with my mom the other day discussing her gift choices for my son’s 5th birthday. As she stood in the toy aisle on the phone with me she asked lots of questions about what my son might like, and at that moment I thought “this is the type of decision that fatigues us”. Let’s face it. He’s 5. Anything dinosaur or matchbox car makes him happy.
At the end of the day, we have to balance the effort of our decisions with the importance of them in the ‘large picture’.
Because fatigue is caused by making tons and tons of decisions that are really pretty unimportant, we often don’t have the capacity to make better ones. I went to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, to get some ideas:
First, make your daily decisions ahead of time.
We tend to have a lot of decisions to make in the morning. What to wear, what to eat, should I run an errand after the kids go to school or before I pick them up? To make matters worse we transfer this to our kids too. I realized that I had asked my daughter about 8 questions before she even had her breakfast the other day!
If we take a few minutes the day before to plan our clothing, rotate just a few breakfast choices or plan our errands, then we don’t need to expend energy on them in the morning.
Second, decide on the big decisions first thing in the morning.
The earlier in the day it is, the better quality our decision making is. So if you need to make a financial or work decision, you might be best to do this first thing in the day and save less consequential decisions for later. The caveat to this is if you are ‘frantic’ in the morning getting kiddos off to school, packing lunches or mom-ing in any other way, then wait until you have some quiet for Pete’s sake!
Next, schedule what’s important.
THIS ONE. This one friend is my downfall. I often don’t schedule what really matters to me (like writing this blog) and instead try to fit it into the gaps. But Clear says that if we schedule what we WANT to do, we don’t have to worry about making time for it. It’s already in the calendar.
Then, use my favorite word… Simplify
If there are tasks and commitments that you strongly dislike but aren’t necessary (and few of them really are, even though we think they are) then eliminate. Just stop doing it! Not a fan of that book club. Stop going. Hate grocery shopping? Use a delivery service.
If your home is overwhelming you with clutter and mess, get rid of it.
(If you’re not sure where to start you can grab my Getting Started guide here) 
When we feel heavy with commitments and clutter, we break commitments to ourselves and we feel frustrated and fed-up with everything. Simplifying your home, your eating habits, and your routine all help to eliminate decisions that ultimately wear us out.
Make decisions ahead of time to overcome your urges at the moment.
Finally, clear your mind.
In the podcast The Life Coach School by Brooke Castillo, she talks about how to live “less sloppy” with our time by taking control of our cluttered brains and pushing past our primitive part of our brain that wants instant gratification.
Brooke says:
“Your ability to be uncomfortable long enough to get what you ultimately want is the secret to getting what you ultimately want”
Part of getting uncomfortable is to ignore the parts of our minds that tell us to take the easy way instead of the hard way. To eat oreos and watch HGTV instead of going to the gym. We want to good stuff now. In this case, the double stuffed stuff.
But Brooke says that “we rob our future selves when we choose instant gratification”. Wow. I had never really thought about it that way. When the Kelly of today chooses ice cream and movies over a workout, it’s the 20 lb heavier Kelly from next year or 5 years later that has to deal with those consequences! Mind. Blown.
Staying focused and using our time wisely is what allows us that white space to do the things we love and are passionate about. But when we are living unfocused, cluttered lives – more often than not, we just feel all worn out and exhausted and we put our dreams (whatever they are) on hold.
It’s hard to stay focused.
When our mind is so full of all of these decisions and tasks, we can find that we shut down and don’t do any of them. I’ve talked before about how I do a brain dump so I was excited to hear Brooke back that idea on her episode.
If you’re ready to try this, here is what you need. A pen, paper, a quiet space and 20 minutes.
Then all you need to do is just start writing. Write down everything that is in your head. Every task you need or want to do. Every project to complete, every event to attend, a phone call to make, a bill to pay. And then when you think you are all done, sit in silence for a moment and think “what else?” then write those. More and more will come.
I have been using this method for years and it always helps me to empty all those thoughts on to the page and get them out of my head. It leaves me room to think creatively and relax.
Brooke takes this a step further though. She says, after you write down everything, (I had 3 full pages) go back and write down what is keeping you from accomplishing this task. Some examples from my page were items like:
- Pick up cake (can’t do it until Saturday)
- Send flyers at school in backpack mail (wait for approval, go to school and print, put in teacher mailboxes)
- Pick up the bushes I cut outside (empty the wagon that is full of sticks so I can use it)
As you can see, there’s always something that needs to happen before the item that is on your list, writing them out made me realize that most aren’t nearly as time-consuming as I assumed they would be.
Here is where the lesson took a turn for the (even) BETTER!
Now, she said, go back and cross off anything you don’t WANT to do. Yes, there will be consequences. But if you know what that is, and are ok with it. Cross it off. I crossed off “paint the chicken coop”. Yes, the consequence is that it will stain and maybe warp some. I’m okay with that.
From here, she suggests that you tackle your most important items first – not your most urgent. She says “if something is urgent, that means you didn’t plan it well. And so if you haven’t planned it well, that doesn’t make it important. It just makes it urgent.”
Then we schedule those items (and all your items) onto your calendar, setting aside specific time blocks to accomplish them. By doing this, we actually get to have MORE free time because we aren’t piecing together lots of unplanned and unorganized tasks throughout the day.
So the moral of the story and lesson I learned is this:
- Decisions that aren’t life or death, really don’t matter. Just make one and move on, plan ahead or eliminate it altogether.
- Make my hard decisions earlier in the day.
- If it matters to me, I need to commit to it and schedule it. (Hey gym.)
- Simplifying quiets my chaos
- Get it all out on paper, decide what’s holding you up, eliminate what you don’t want to do and know that life will go on.
Do you think you’ll try this “brain dump” process? I’d love to hear how it went! Leave me a comment below and share this article with a friend who might benefit!
