Lack of willpower isn't your problem - let's talk Decision Fatigue

WOOOOHOOOO - it's our 50th episode folks!!!

This episode links in with last week's episode "Your Space and Your Motivation".

Decision fatigue (also known as choice overload) is the diversion of your finite mental resources to excessive or non-essential problem solving.

 These are the things that push into your mental (and physical) space that force you to weight up options for reallocating your time. You might recognise them by the nagging feeling that you should be doing something else, or be somewhere else! 

Spreading your mental energy in this way affects how well you do stuff! Stanford Profession Clifford Nass even went as far as to call multi-taskers “suckers for irrelevancy”. His study tried many ways to identify what mulit-taskers did well and came up with.. well, nothing! Listen to "Stop Mulit-Tasking your Health and Fitness" 

Why is this important to your health and fitness? Once your mental energy is depleted you become reluctant to engage in the thinking required to weigh up options and trade-offs. Then you begin to rely on WILLPOWER.

Not only that but you start to “hoard” your mental energy as your self control is used up. This means that you will start to take the path of least resistance which often means no decision is made – this looks a lot like procrastination!

So, what can we do about it?

1. Follow routines
2. Decrease your options
3. Set a time limit 
4. Make important decisions early in the day
5. Don’t rehash decisions 
6. Don’t make a decision when you are tired or hungry 
7. Read books not screens
8. Make notes and lists!

“I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now”

You’re making on average 36,000 decisions a day and each one has an effect on your willpower, your procrastination, your ability to make the next decisions.  Create good habits to free up thinking space and if you find yourself slipping into procrastination consider if this is simply an ability to choose to between two (or more) options. In that case Count Backwards from 5, this will reengage your prefrontal cortex and commit you to action!

Read the full blog post over on our website.

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