Stop Making Decisions

Stop making decisions. Or rather, stop making so many decisions.

Here's the thing - you're smart, you have an important job, maybe you have a family, kids, a bunch of people in your personal and professional life that rely on you to be the leader and to take charge. You have to make a ridiculous number of decisions each day - for yourself, for your teams, your kids, maybe even your friends.Kandinsky - Ville Arabe

And it's exhausting.

So I'd like to offer a couple of simple recommendations to reduce the amount and volume of decisions you have to deal with in any given day, taken not from me, but from a couple of folks you might be familiar with - President Obama, and the President of the Internet, Mark Zuckerberg.

Here they are, more or less:

1. From Barack - Eat and wear the same thing every day (or at least get someone to make all your meals and place them in front of you at meal time).

From the Vanity Fair piece linked to above:

(Obama) I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions

2. From Zuck - Wear the same thing every day (or at least get someone to lay out your clothes for you each day).

From the Business Insider piece:

I mean, I wear the same thing every day, right? I mean, it's literally, if you could see my closet," Zuckerberg starts to explain, as Lauer asks if he owns 12 of the same gray t-shirt. "Maybe about 20,"

Remove from your daily decision making the mundane, wearying, and non-productive process of deciding what to eat and what to wear and you will free up time, energy, and mental capacity to focus on things that really matter.

Now, you might not be in a position to order around your minions to organize for you your food and clothing choices each day, but chances are you are spending time contemplating, deliberating, and ruminating on things that at the end of the day that at best don't really matter that much, and at worst, are materially detracting from your ability to do amazing things.

You don't need to be consulted about everything.

You don't need to weigh 38 options before you decide where to have dinner tonight.

You can let go of at least one thing that doesn't really matter to spend 10 more minutes on something that does.

It is ok not to be in charge all the time.

Have a Great Weekend!

Comments

[Doug Shaw]

I love this post. And of course we're not really in charge of much at all, 'cept maybe our own attitude eh?

Cheers - Doug

[Lyn Hoyt]

OMG, that s why I hired a house keeper. But, there are good theories here along the same path that cause hiring at a small company. You are doing so much yourself nothing seems to really get done. Hire help!!

[Steve]

Doug - I don't know, I can't decide :)

Lyn - the housekeeper decision is a perfect point. It is partly about the time you save not having to do that work, but it also allows you to have one less worry in your mind as well. Thanks!