PhotoCredit: PuppyPower
As I pursue graceful productivity, my theme from last week, I have been more than obsessed with the idea of cognitive load. Grace implies a flow and presence that an overloaded brain seems incapable of. Or at least my brain.
Decision making fatigue is at the core of this. An incredible recent email from Rian Dorris at The Flow Research Collective broke this issue down as follows, "the brain is an organ. It gets fatigued just like muscles do. Making decisions depletes energy and can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and even depression. Cognitively, it compromises executive function. Physically, it can lead to headaches and impaired digestion
Doris notes that there is research to suggest the brain makes something like 35,000 decisions a day and over 200 of them are food decisions. Pop me an email if you want me to forward the full article...they don't publicly publish their newsletter content.
As a result of consuming this intel, I made a few instant decisions. I book all my work trips to depart at the same flight time. I always fly the night before meetings, so I have the afternoon to prep (and some buffer for flight changes). I answer every email within the day I get it, with a quick answer if I don't have time for a longer one (please don't test me on that). I deleted a HUGE backlog from Trello and obliterated my Netflix queue because having a million things I wanted to watch seemingly made it harder to choose. I cleaned all the screengrabs from my phone and filed them in Evernote or deleted them (now I just get to look at pics and not think "oh yeah, I need to order that doorbell..." And I organized the 500Billion articles I had open on all my browsers. Now I read them immediately or save them to Instapaper.
I know, that is a LOT of admin. But I really feel like I lost 10 pounds. From my brain.
There are a million ways you can automate your world. You can establish a daily schedule, you can set morning and evening rituals, you can pre-make decisions (I love making all my food in the weekend, so I just need to grab something from the fridge when hunger strikes.) One of my other favorites is delegating decision making in certain areas to a trusted friend. Best case is either a good decision or one less friend - which surely reduces cognitive load on some level.
Have a think about it and try a couple on for size. Or just observe what you find hard and how you might be able to program a decision-making algorithm for yourself? Leave your brain for the important decisions like where to go on vacation and whether you need another puppy...