Combat Decision Fatigue with Preplanning
How many decisions have you made so far today? I’m willing to bet you quickly lose count. From what shirt to wear to what to make for dinner, we are bombarded with choices at every turn. I’m getting stressed just thinking about it! Every decision, no matter how small or trivial it may seem, zaps away a bit of our energy. With so many decisions to be made in a day, it’s no wonder we experience decision fatigue.
Decision fatigue can be as simple as standing in front of your closet a couple extra minutes trying to decide what to wear, to being so burnt out by the end of the day you cannot decide what to make for dinner so you settle for picking up a pizza instead. It doesn’t have to be this way. Once you identify the decisions that are chipping away at you, you can start chipping back.
Whenever possible, make decisions in advance. Lay out your clothing the night before. Set a weekly dinner menu every Sunday. Make your grocery list the day before you plan on going shopping. OK, I feel you rolling your eyes and shooting daggers at me through the screen. “Isn’t all that stuff just more work and more things to add to my to-do list?!” you ask. Well…. yes and no. Yes, it’s extra stuff added to your plate, but in return it takes the decisions off your plate later, with later being your more valuable time in the sort of scenarios I am proposing. Hear me out. Here are some examples to demonstrate how this works in reality.
Plan your outfit the night before. I'm juggling a toddler in the morning and can barely get a thought in edge wise. I find it much easier to decide on my outfit the night before without the added distraction of taming a toddler tornado.
Plan breakfast and lunch the night before. I am not a morning person. Are you also too tired to think and make decisions so early in the morning? Let yourself run on auto-pilot with the decisions already made, pack those school lunches without a second thought and have a smoother start to your day. Or go one step beyond me and pack the actual lunch the night before too!
Make your grocery list at least a day in advance. How often have you thought – “I need to go to the store. But, what do I need to get? There isn’t enough time to check what I’m running low on.” So you either just don’t go (me, that's me finding an excuse to not go!), or decide to wing it. The former delays the task and creates a vicious cycle. The latter may waste money if you buy things you didn’t need, or your time if you forget something. Now envision the scenario where you already made the list. “I need to go shopping”...grab your list, head out the door, buy what you need…BOOM, DONE!
Now let’s tackle that overwhelming to-do list. Ever make the non-decision to not do anything because you couldn’t decide what to tackle first? Ever feel helpless, like why bother tackling my to-do list because I know I’ll never finish it anyway? That overwhelming feeling of defeat that inevitably creeps in before we’ve even had a chance to get started. This was a common pattern for me until I started preplanning for the week.
The key is to plan your week at a macro level. Keep it simple and flexible. Lay out your major tasks by day and roughly slate them for the morning/afternoon/evening.
This system has greatly helped me keep my daily momentum and get things done. I no longer freeze with analysis paralysis. As a huge added bonus, once I check off my items for the day, I don’t feel burdened to do more that day since I've already planned out the important stuff.
I realize it’s not always possible to preplan decisions, whether due to lack of time or unforeseen circumstances. This is why it is also important to preplan your strategies for on the spot decision making. Here are a few ideas:
Delegate the decision to another qualified person. Take the pressure off yourself.
Set a time limit. Don't get stuck in a decision spiral.
Accept there may not be one right choice. If the options are each valid enough for you to be torn between them, maybe that's because no one option is right or wrong. Use this knowledge to rid yourself of the pressure of making the right/best choice and just make a decision.
Whatever the route you choose...ha...there it is again...choice. Whichever strategy best suits you, know that preplanning will help. Make your decisions in advance during a time where you are not under pressure and have more mental capacity to take on the decision. Plan for how you want to handle decisions in the moment. When you are confident in your decision making process you will be more confident and quicker in your decisions.
Which strategy resonates with you? What are you already doing to get the upper hand on decision fatigue? Share in the comments!
Product Resources
I use this post-it notepad for my weekly planning. It’s simple and to the point.
I like this dry-erase board for meal planning because
Its small footprint fits nicely on the side of my fridge without adding visual clutter
It’s blank slate allows me to repurpose it for other use cases as well.
It's mobile so I can bring it to the counter with me for easy reference.
Caution: I've noticed the clasp that connects the marker to its hanging magnet can sporadically come undone and pose a choking hazard. I removed mine and just store the markers in a drawer.
A coin. Flip it and let it decide!
