Well, that’s the saying anyway.
I have no idea how accurate this number is, but the actual number doesn’t matter. We do make decisions constantly.
Starting from when we open out eyes in the morning – do I get out of bed or do I snooze for 10 minutes? Clothing. Food. Traffic. Planning. Exercise. Wordings in an email. Choices everywhere, big and small.
All this constant decision making takes a mental toll on our cognitive abilities – so our decisions gets sloppier throughout the day and this leads to mental exhaustion to some degree. This idea is termed as decision fatigue.
As someone who loves to geek out about optimization and productivity, I have found the idea of decision fatigue very helpful and fun to play around with – as sort of a mind exercise.
Just noticing what I think about during the day:
Which decisions do I enjoy making and which are just noise, unhelpful or inconsequential?
What do I spend a lot of time thinking about that I could completely eliminate?
One of the biggest takeaways I had when I first did this, was the realization of how much I thought about food.
All.
Day.
Long.
I love food and I love cooking. I would spend an obscene amount of time thinking about what to make for dinner, if I had the right ingredients for this or that, what I would need to buy and where – and a shitload of other stuff related to this. I really hate shopping and supermarkets, so I would dread the after-work stressful shopping run, and WHAT IF THEY ARE OUT OF SQUASH AGAIN!??
So, I started grocery shopping online, and for a whole week in advance. And I tell you – this really did free up so much energy and mental space for me. And time. I won back so much time with that one decision.
I have been doing it for years now, and because of this, I now get to enjoy everything related to cooking.
Another thing I did was to build the habit of leaving extremely early for everything. This way, I never have to think about being late for anything. I don’t have to be overly annoyed if the train is delayed. I dont have to look at the time. I can take a walk and enjoy the day a little bit before I arrive anywhere.
Pure awesomeness.
My life looks a bit different from when I did this exercise last, so I am going to take another go at it. Will be fun to see what comes out of it this time!