Making good choices is a smart thing to do, right?

Decision fatigue occurs after a number of decisions are made in a short period of time. The fewer decisions you make, the less decision fatigue you will experience. Making unimportant decisions early in the day, while the mind is still fresh, interferes with the ability to make good choices as the day goes on. Good decision making is a renewable resource … but it does drain throughout the day.

What is Decision Fatigue?

In decision making and psychology, decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making. It is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision making. For instance, judges in court have been shown to make less favorable decisions later in the day than early in the day. Decision fatigue may also lead to consumers making poor choices with their purchases.

Save your prime decision-making mojo for when it matters.

Put Daily Decisions on Auto-Pilot

• Organize your space so you don’t have to try to decide where you left your keys the night before, you don’t have to look for your wallet, purse, shoes, coat or sunglasses when you are headed out the door.
• Don’t stuff your closet with clothes. Limit your wardrobe with a few favorites — all of which are coordinating pieces — so you don’t have to decide what to wear first thing in the morning.
• Have a basic breakfast or two that you eat each morning (I have a protein shake during the week- it’s fast, easy and decision free, and save other options for the weekend.)
• Minimize your self-care routine to the basics to keep it simple (if you wear makeup, go natural so it will go with whatever outfit you have on.)
• Create a standard menu for dinners at home, with a coordinated grocery shopping list to reduce the “dinner decision drama” during the week, and to prevent impulse buying at the grocery store.

Steps like these will preserve your prime decision-making abilities for things that will move your life forward. Retain your creativity for when you need it most. Your creative space needs to be sacred — whether you work in a creative field, enjoy creative hobbies, or just want a creative and more adventurous, enjoyable life.

Conserve Your Decision-Making Energy

Don’t allow unimportant decisions to take up all your prime decision making “time real estate.” You need to save your good decision making and your creative thinking and problem-solving capacity for the important stuff. This type of energy conservation will make you less likely to make stupid (or at least less beneficial) decisions later in the day — when those decisions will matter more.

Living small helps you to make life more enjoyable … and that’s pretty smart! 😉