In this episode, Maeva talks about decision fatigue and how it might be the reason you feel so exhausted or can't do everything you want to. We make so many decisions every day, and Maeva covers how to add structure to only make the most important decisions so that you have more mental clarity.
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In this episode, Maeva talks about decision fatigue and how it might be the reason you feel so exhausted or can't do everything you want to. We make so many decisions every day, and Maeva covers how to add structure to only make the most important decisions so that you have more mental clarity.
Follow Maeva on Instagram for more content: https://instagram.com/purposefulliving.co
Want some 1:1 coaching with Maeva? Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/RfBKV8MpCiZu7vBy8
Today we are talking about decision fatigue. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart, and I have been doing a lot of work lately to try to figure out how to reduce my decision fatigue. I think a lot of. Reason, a lot of the reasons that some people are exhausted, depleted, can barely form a sentence by the end of the day, is this kind of decision fatigue. The average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day, 35,000. That's a lot of decisions. So that's like from deciding am I gonna wash my hair today? Or what am I gonna do at the gym? What am I gonna wear? What am I gonna eat, uh, where I'm gonna go to work? And I say that because that's a decision that I have to make as a somebody who works from home and has um, options. I could go to a cafe, I could stay at home. I, if I go to a coworking space, which one, for example? And sometimes I'm making these decisions at the beginning of the day, which is already depleting my, my resources for the day. So every single decision we make in a day chips away at our total mental resources for that same day. So I'm here to talk to you a little bit about this because you know, We're here saying, I wanna be able to do it all, but I'm so tired. How do I do it all? And the way that these people do it that we watch and say, how the heck do they do that is they limit the amount of decisions that they make every day. Um, so when there's a, especially when there's a lot of information, when you're making a lot of, um, high When you have a job where you have to make a lot of important decisions, that can be very exhausting, but then you also have to make a lot of non-important decisions in your every day at work. There's just so many decisions every day that we have to make and it's, it's exhausting. Um, And it actually does take away from your mental resources. Your brain power is weakened, so it also reduces your ability later on in the day to make the right decision. And there's been some research as well that this is related to. Food and making sure that you're well fed when you are making these kind of decisions. I saw a study that was, uh, basically that judges were more likely to do, to give a profit, a profitable, a positive judgment, um, right after lunch than right before lunch. Right before lunch. They were usually spo They are more likely to give a judgment that, or a sentence that is more negative for the defendant. So when the possibility of making the right decision decreases because you're exhausted, satisfaction also decreases. Regrets start to be experienced'cause you're making the wrong decisions. Um, in a study by, uh, in a study on critical thinking. E-learning and decision fatigue. It was found that increasing the number of daily average decisions, it was found to be proportional to the amount of mental fatigue. So no wonder we're all burnt out. No wonder we're saying. I. I can't possibly have time for this. And this is how I am trying to currently hack my time because I have a lot of things going on right now, and, uh, sometimes I wonder how I have all the time to do it as well. But what I do is, and what I'm currently continuing to work on, is how can I cut more and more decisions out of my day? Um, a day of constant decision making. just leaves us depleted it. It ends up at the end of the day, we either can't make a choice or we make the wrong choice by the end of the day. So you really have to pay attention to what kind of choices are we making. So if you feel burnt out, if you feel exhausted at work, or just exhausted generally in your day-to-day and you wanna do more stuff, but you don't understand how you actually could,'cause you just, your brain cannot take anymore. This episode is for you. We're talking about how to rethink your routine and remove as many decisions as possible, um, so that you can actually pay attention to what is most important to you. So let's talk about it. Uh, an example when we started learning about decision fatigue, we all heard about Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg who wear the same outfit every day. Why? Because they say it's one less decision to make. They probably have a million other things in their lives that are automated. I bet you they have cooks or Steve Jobs had one. They have things where they're removing as much decisions from their day-to-day. That's also why they have executive assistants making a lot of decisions about their schedule. I now have an executive assistant who I'm trying to offboard a bunch of decisions to her so I can make fewer decisions and I can only make decisions on the things that are the most important for me to take decisions about. Albert Einstein as well was reported, uh, to have bought a bunch of the versions of the same gray suit because he didn't want to waste brainpower on choosing an outfit every morning. So if Einstein did it look at his kind of brain power, Obama, president Obama also does the same thing. Uh, he says he only wears gray or blue suits because he's trying to pare down decisions. Quote from him said, I don't wanna make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing because I have too many other decisions to make. Um, and he also mentioned research that he found that the simple act of making decisions degrades your ability to make further decisions. So decision making is a huge energy sucker. You first you have to add up all the, all the options, and sometimes there's a bunch of options. I see when people are at restaurants and they're like, oh my God, I can't choose. Either just choose, I'm very decisive there. I just say, okay, choose the first thing that looks good, or it's really not an important decision, what you're gonna eat at a restaurant. It's not an important decision. Um, maybe what you're gonna eat at your wedding is an important decision, but when you go out with a friend, you're going out to, it's not an important decision. Just make one or go to a restaurant with fewer decisions to make. Um, just, you could set a rule and say, I don't go to restaurants with more than four things on the menu. Uh, or just always get the same thing. Choose one thing and I'll, and if you liked it, just stick to that. So these are some things that you can do. But yeah, adding up all of the options that is brain power. And then on top of that, you have to commit to this decision that you made, which is willpower. So you can see how this quickly drains a lot of energy from you. So if you're one of these people who wants to have it all, I wanna do this project, I wanna do that project, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, and I wanna have time for the gym, and I wanna have time for myself, and I wanna hang out with my partner and my friends. I can relate to you because I'm exactly the same way I. But that is impossible to do if you don't have this kind of structure to manage this fatigue that's, that could come with it. So the key to having it all is getting rid of as many decisions as possible that you might make on a daily basis so that you reserve your mental capacity for the most important decisions to make. Um, all right, so let's talk about it. Let's dive in. What do you do to reduce decision fatigue? So plan ahead as much as possible, you can sit down and audit. What are all these decisions that I actually make? So am I deciding what to watch at night on Netflix? Am I wasting my energy on that? I guess at the end of the day, it's a little bit better than at the beginning of the day because at least you've already done all your work, but it's still tiring. Am I thinking all day about what am I gonna eat for dinner? Like I mentioned, I have this app, um, that gives me access to a bunch of different coworking spaces in Barcelona or in a lot of other cities. It's just like a bunch of different coworking spaces. So I have that app. I'm signed up to a coworking space down the street, and I have, I am a member of soho House, so I have all these three things, and that's actually like 30 choices more probably with the app that gives me access to all of the different places. It's so many choices where I could work and I have my home office. So sometimes when I haven't planned ahead, I wake up in the morning and I'm like, Ooh, should I go there? Oh, no, but that closes at six. Wait, do I have a meeting? What am I gonna do? Ah, and then I spend a good 10 minutes in the morning trying to figure out where I'm gonna go, and that is a huge energy suck. So plan ahead. Um, what else might be causing you to make decisions? Um, where, what else, what days am I gonna exercise? What am I gonna do at the gym? When am I gonna wash my hair? All these kind of things you can actually put into a schedule so that you don't have to make the decision that day. You know, that day I'm gonna do this for my skincare, for example. So I have, some days I do exfoliation. Other days I'm gonna do the retinol. Some days I'm just gonna do recover. Every morning I do the same thing. But I just have that printed out. The routine is printed out. It's in my bathroom. I never have to think about it. I just go in the bathroom. I look at the day, I look at the like, okay, it's Monday. What am I doing on Mondays? Okay, boom. Then I do that thing. So that's one less thing to think about for the gym, for example, how do you plan out the gym? So I plan out, I go to the gym Tuesday, Thursdays, Saturday, and Sunday. So that way I decided, I work from home Tuesdays and Thursdays. Why? So I don't have to worry about getting up way too early. So I know I can wake up at the same time, uh, that I always wake up. Then I go to the gym. I'm gonna come home and I can work from home. On the other days I can go to an office because I don't, uh, have to get ready after the gym and do the whole workout and everything. So in any given day, I don't have to decide whether I'm gonna go to the gym or whether I'm gonna go to a coworking space or work from home. It's already on the schedule. I already know that I'm gonna do that thing. So I'm not, and I also don't have To hope that I'll have enough willpower to go to the gym. When I used to just say, I'll try to go three times a week or four times a week. Then I'm like, I wake up and I'm like, oh, not today, maybe tomorrow, but no, I know it's Tuesday. I'm going to the gym. Um, So I don't need to have the willpower either. I don't need to make those decisions. It's in the plan that I've created for myself. So I don't, and I also don't have to decide what to do once I get to the gym, because I work with the, a personal trainer. Well, she has this group app, Harriet Harper Fitness. I recommend if you're into fitness to follow her on Instagram. Um, and try out her, her program. She has this app, It's very affordable and it's gives you a weekly routine basically. So I just follow that and I never have to think about it. Those are things I don't have to think about. I go and I do in order to be able to relax. In order to be able to not feel super stressed and manage all of these things that you do, you need structure and you don't have to go crazy. You don't have to be like, okay, from 2:00 PM to 2:15 PM I do this and this and that. If that helps you do it. I mean, the idea is you're trying to end goal is that you relax, but um, making too many decisions is counter Productive to being able to relax more. So you do wanna be able to find that balance. Um, I speak a lot about the masculine and the feminine, and if you want to relax into the feminine, you need the masculine structure to help you know, when are those, that you're still getting all the things done so that you can relax. And you also need to avoid random decision making. So deciding about things that just are not important, just eliminate those. From your life. Try to figure out what decisions am I making that I don't need to be making on a daily basis. All right, so let's talk about ways, uh, to minimize the decisions. So, uh, oh, I already started doing that. We're talking about routines. So minimizing decisions by creating routines for yourself that you don't have to decide. You just know you're gonna do those things there. That reminds me tonight I have to plan out where I'm gonna work next week.'cause I do like spontaneity. That's the thing. I don't like these rigid schedules. For a lot of things. I do like some spontaneity, but I can kind of plan the spontaneity, if that makes sense. So that's why I have so many different locations to work because I like to change up the place that I'm working. But for example, today I'm recording, this is Sunday, and I can sit down at the end of the day and um, um, plan where I'm gonna work next week so I can plan this day. I'm gonna go to that place this day, I'm gonna go to that place and I can do that in advance so I don't have to decide on the day. I remember to do that. Maba, Um, and you can also meal plan for the whole week and meal prep or order a meal kit or maybe don't even prep, but at least plan and buy the ingredients in advance. Anything that you can do, because figuring out what we're gonna eat for dinner. Some people think about that all day long and I'm like, how are you thinking? I've had friends and my mom always does this. Uh, they're always, it. It'll be like 11 o'clock in the morning. And they're like, so what do you think, uh, we should have for dinner tonight? And I'm like, what? Dinner? That's so far away. And so this is when I didn't plan and I'm still learning how to do this as well.'cause sometimes I keep my meals very, very simple. Um, and it's always some kind of protein, one vegetable, one starch, and it's. It's pretty repeatable. So I keep those things very, very simple. But lately I've been getting a lot more into cooking and trying better recipes. So I have to meal plan and grocery shop in advance. Otherwise, I'm gonna be sitting there thinking about it all day. And if I'm thinking about it all day, how am I supposed to spend my energy focusing on other things? So another thing that you can do to reduce your decision fatigue is plan your daily decisions the night before. So first there's gonna be like, what am I gonna wear to work? What am I gonna eat for breakfast? Um, should I go to the post office before, after work, et cetera, but also, what are you gonna prioritize and focus on the next day? So this is something that I started doing recently, is at the end of each day, I look at the calendar, well, I have, we set OKRs. So that's a, a goal setting framework, uh, that you can follow called objectives and key results. And we follow that, uh, in my company. So I know what my overall goals are for the quarter, and when I set those in the quarter, I try to break them down for the week. So then I look, okay, what What am I doing next week? So, for example, last Friday, I sent a message. I always send a message to my assistant just to hold me accountable. Um, this is my, this is the goal for next week. This is what I want to accomplish. This is what I accomplished this week. This is what I'm gonna accomplish on Monday. Monday I finished the day I. Then I look these, this is my one or two priorities for tomorrow that I need to get done. So I know when I sit down at the computer, I know what to do. Otherwise I have my time blocked out for c e O work and I sit there and I spend the first 45 minutes faffing about going to my email to Slack or like all these other things, trying to figure out what's the most important thing I could do right now, and then I've lost 45 minutes. Whereas if I set the priority the night before, I sit down and I do that thing and I make the most of the time. Okay. Uh, another tip that you can do to reduce decision fatigue is always do the most important thing first. And this requires you to have a really good understanding of your priorities and what are the most important things. So this is the next step, actually, but, um, do not leave. For the end of the day or for later on, what you need the most mental clarity for. So whatever you do first should be the most important thing and leave all the extra stuff for after if then if that means get to your emails later, get then get to your emails later. If that means, I don't know what it is because I don't know your priorities and you should know your priorities, but always do the most important thing first. Like as soon as you sit down, I have recently started, uh, practicing something called done by 10 30, which is from my former coaches at two x by Austin Ley, I believe is how you say his last name. Um, so this, his done by 10 30 formula is basically wake up. early and you immediately start working on the most important task of the day. And then you do that for like two hours, focus time, and then you go to the gym, you do your morning routine, your e breakfast, et cetera, and then you continue on for the day. So I'm not doing this every day, but for example, on the day, so I told you I go to the gym Tuesday, Thursdays and I know I'm gonna do done by 10 30, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So then I really, really get ahead on work. Um, So these are kind of things that you wanna plan, but if you don't have your priority set in advance, you're gonna spend the first 45 minutes wasting your time trying to figure out what's the most important thing to do. Um, so you don't have to wake up super early, you know, do whatever, but always figure out when is the, when is your peak time? If you work best in the evenings or the afternoons, and that's when you should really do it. But if you work best in the mornings like me, and like a lot of people, then do that, do the most important thing first. Next step is you really need to know your priorities and cut ruthlessly. And this isn't only for business, this isn't only for work, but really in life. So, um, really understand what is the most important thing to you. This is something that we learn getting into later adulthood, as well as like friends. Who do I wanna spend time with? Well, I'm somebody who gets along with everybody and anybody. So I used to have like a really, really big group of friends. I used to hang out, like try to hang out with everybody all the time. But now I realize I wanna prioritize, um, different kinds of relationships. Relationships I can get deeper with relationships that influence me positively. Relationships that help me become a better person, um, and that I can help them become a better person. And we get along and we Ha. You know, there's that. So I, I just have these kind of priorities of who I wanna spend time with, and I'm saying no to other kinds of ways to spend time with people. Uh, I do still have probably too many hobbies. I have this, I have improv. I perform every improv every Thursday night with a crew. Uh, and I have Italian class twice a week. So I have been considering Are those actually my priorities? But then I talk a lot about you have to maintain your hobbies to feel fulfilled. So that's a point where I haven't quite figured out how I wanna move forward with that. But you, when it comes to work, you really need to get clear on what your priorities are. Where do you provide the most value? Say no. To everything else, and it's gonna be hard'cause people are gonna try to take time from you and you're gonna say, it's because I'm valuable because I can help them. So I wanna be able to do it. But you have to say no because then it's a toll on you. And if it's a toll on you, then you're not able to help them the best. I like when I say yes to everybody in my team. I am depleted by the end of the day or by the time I get to them, I am like zoned out and I can't even help them the way that I want to. So I do have to protect that time. Um, and it also helps them to solve their own problems, honestly. Like if I'm more available for them, they become dependent on me and they solve less of problems themselves. Whereas if I am gone more often and I let them fend for themselves, they're all really smart and they figure, they figure it out. By themselves. They don't need me. At the end of the day, I don't know any better than them. So they figure that out. Um, so it also empowers them. Um, so for example, my priorities right now are building my health. I. Back up. Not that it went down, but I'm just trying to get really healthy. So I'm prioritizing having a good sleep every night. I'm planning my food ahead, making sure I'm eating healthy, getting my gym time. I am, um, currently prioritizing getting my finances in order. I did go a little bit crazy over the summer. I. Um, and I practiced what I do not preach, which is I spent more than I earned. There were some other, um, unexpected circumstances. It wasn't all vacations, fun and play. There were some unexpected things that happened, which I will be talking about the episode of my life update, but that did kind of mess me up financially. So I'm just trying to get that back in order. So that is a priority of mine. And in order to get those finances back in order, I'm working very, very hard. So another priority is staying as stress-free as possible during this time where I need extreme focus. So this really means cutting down on anything that is excess. Um, another thing that you can do, if this is in your scope of what, like if this is something that you can do, is delegate decision making if possible. So I have a team of leaders and I have my executive assistant, and I'm delegating a lot of decision making to them and entrusting them. So you have to be able to trust, you have to know how to delegate, you have to be able to support them. Um, but if you can delegate not just tasks, but actual decision making and responsibilities, I. This is gonna take a lot off your plate at work. So this is something that I am recently dabbling with, well not recently'cause I'm my leadership team for a few years now and they make a lot of decisions, but I am giving a lot more decisions now to, um, my head of operations who I promoted to c o o and to my executive assistant. I'm giving her a lot more responsibility and then automate things that don't matter. as much as you can automate. So, for example, social media time for me, um, instead of being like, oh, should I go, should I try to control this? And trying to use my own willpower, which is again, brain energy. I, uh, have this app that has all these different schedules of like, morning, night, I block on Saturday, I, I can't get it on Instagram during the workday. I can't. And then there's only specific hours and I just have to abide by that because they're the Settings I put so I don't have to decide again or use my willpower to manage my social media time. So these are all things that, um, you can do to help reduce decision fatigue, reduce burnout, reduce, reduce exhaustion, and allow you to possibly do a little bit more or maintain the level of what you're doing right now and feel healthy and good about it. If you enjoy this episode or think it's useful for anybody, please do share it. Uh, I would really, really appreciate it if you do. And also if you could leave me a review either on Spotify or Apple on Apple Podcast, you can actually write something about it. That would be really awesome. Let me know if you do. I'll give you a little gift if you do, uh, that would be really, really helpful for me. And thank you for listening to this and I will see you next time. I.