Do you deal with decision fatigue? Take a look at the following statements and see if they ring true for you.
- Mundane daily tasks of your life seem to zap all your energy and you feel like you have “nothing left” to do the creative work you want to do.
- You get stuck in analysis paralysis over routine and simple decisions.
- You procrastinate or avoid making important decisions
Could it be decision fatigue?
Decision fatigue is a real thing. It stumps productivity, squashes creativity, and makes you feel mentally drained and overwhelmed. Even worse, decision fatigue actually reduces your ability to make good decisions with sound judgement. Decision fatigue increases your likelihood of making poor decisions, procrastinating, or avoiding making any decision at all.
Our brains make thousands of decisions every day. Daily decisions about what to eat, what to wear, and how to spend your time, what’s on the schedule for the day, etc. clutter your minds with the mundane and crowd out the mental energy that could be used for more important things.
Moms, especially moms who are also building a business while raising young kids, are probably at the top of the list of sufferers of decision fatigue. I have been in that space many times in my life. I’d venture to say that you probably have too.
The good news is that there are some very simple habits you can start today to streamline your daily decisions to minimize the mental energy we use on mundane tasks and keep your mind clearer and less cluttered.
What to eat?
Habit: Plan meals with shopping lists
Food preferences, allergies, and time all have a significant impact on the food we eat. Take an inventory of your family’s current favorites use those as a basis for a weekly meal plan. When you have a plan, you don’t have to make daily decisions about what to eat each day.
When my kids were younger I developed a rotating 4 week meal plan with shopping lists. It served me well during that time because all I had to do was pull out that week’s shopping list before I headed to the grocery store. It took the thinking out of feeding my family!! It was heavenly. My brain needed the relief from food-making decisions during that time and the 4 week rotation made sure that we weren’t eating the same things week after week.
I’ve got a copy of my 4 week rotating menu with shopping lists here as a free download for you. It might not be exactly what you need for your family, but can serve as a starting point to help you customize your own simplified food plan.
What to wear?
Habit: Plan clothing for the week
There a many ways to streamline clothing choices. The simplest way to reduce daily “what to wear” decisions is to spend 30 minutes once a week and pick out daily outfits for yourself and your kids. If your kids are old enough, set them to the task and help them create this lifelong habit that can benefit them for their whole lives. Pick a spot for daily outfits and make sure to add underwear and socks to the choices for each day.
What to do?
Habit: Create routines for daily tasks
I am HUGE on routines. I absolutely hate micromanaging my household and my kids, so I spend a chunk of time a couple times a year to evaluate what is working, what needs to be changed, and then plan it out. For me, our daily routines are essential to prevent our house from falling into chaos. My suggestion for creating routines that work for your family is to take an inventory of the daily repetitive tasks you have to think about each day and consider what would work for you to automate those tasks?
For me, this currently looks like this:
Our Morning and Evening routines are posted in two places in the house. I am done with the days of asking everyone individually if they remembered to brush their teeth, put their clothes in the laundry basket, showered, blah, blah, blah. Instead, I say, “did you do your morning (or evening) routines?” This simple habit has saved me and the kids so much mental energy. I’m not using up precious energy micromanaging, the kids are learning independence, and the important stuff is getting done. It’s a win all around.
How to schedule your day?
Habit: Time block your days
Time blocking is a way to schedule your day for maximum effectiveness and productivity and works both for your family schedule and your work schedule. In fact, time blocking is my #1 productivity hack that has allowed me to accomplish all I do. The basis of time blocking is that each task or activity that do in a day has it’s own dedicated block of time. During that dedicated time block, you are fully focused on that task and stay focused until the time is complete. I don’t know about you, but I can accomplish way more in just an hour or two of fully focused time than I can in a whole day of multi-tasking.
Time blocking eliminates the need to make decisions each day about what you are doing at any given time. You have already made the decisions ahead of time. Your days flow with so much more ease when you have a plan and always know what’s next. Of course, as a moms, we all know to expect the unexpected. Things happen to throw us off, it’s normal. But when you have a plan, those unexpected things don’t throw us off for the entire day. We can jump back in without much thought.
The result
By automating repetitive responsibilities, creating routines, and planning ahead we can eliminate many of the daily decisions that use up too much of our precious mental energy.
A mind free from the excess clutter of the mundane tasks of life is more open to think clearly, make better decisions, and be more creative. I encourage you to start using one or more of these ideas today and see how it helps.
Keep me posted! I love hearing what’s working for you.
Do you have other ideas to squash decision fatigue? Please share!
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