Decision Fatigue

This is my friend Christian:

This week I was talking to my friend Christian.  Christian is a former Police Officer.  He had a very distinguished career, working as a Homicide Detective and Tactical Operator.  He is now one of the top real estate agents in the Nashville area.  He is an incredibly humble, generous loving man.  He is one of the highest functioning people that I know.  He has a great family, is always available, seems to have unlimited capacity and always seems to know the right answer.  I’m not sure if you have friends like Christian but if you don’t, he’ll be your friend, I promise you that.  

We are moving to the Nashville area come the new year and just so happens our place is 5 minutes from Christian.  I can’t say we picked the spot on accident.  We love Christian and his family.  I was talking to him this week about the move, our plans his business, fitness, faith and life.  As we were discussing fitness I asked him how his new gym was.  He joined a Crossfit gym right by our new place.  He mentioned how he loved Crossfit because he just has to show up at 6 am and the workout is planned and he doesn’t have to decide what to do.  Christian has worked out his entire life, always fit, dedicated, motivated and disciplined.  He is running a big business, he has lots of plates spinning, employees to lead and problems to solve all day everyday.  He said he doesn’t feel like he has the energy to figure out his fitness in this season.  The only decision he has to make is to wake up and get out the door, he then gets to show up and doesn’t have to make a decision about the work out, time, exercises, reps, sets etc.  

I think as first responders we can all relate to this.  It feels like we spend a lot of our time making decisions for other peoples lives that we hardly know.  They also tend to be highly emotional, high stakes decisions.  They have real life ramifications and they matter to other people….a lot.  Peoples lives are being affected in a major way but what YOU decide.  

Where does that leave you and your family.  By the time you get around to your life and what to make for dinner, what work out to do, how to engage with your kids you find yourself incapable of deciding sometimes.  So dinner becomes a high carb, processed snack, we don’t work out because it doesn’t matter anyways in that moment and we watch some TV because that’s the path of least resistance.  

As I always say, lets not bring a problem to the table without a solution.  What’s the solution?  Well its discipline and a plan.  Which is easy to say but hard to do.  Those who gain the most benefit from working out do so because they work out consistently for a long time and that’s because they are able to withstand the boredom of repetitive tasks and movements because they’ve made that 1 decision before it was time to take action.  

The key to overcoming decision fatigue is to make the important decisions before action time.  Then you have to prepare for success.  What does that look like?   First take a minute to decide the things that are important to you.  You can pick 2-3 areas like :

Family
Health
Finance
Education
Carrer 
Education
Social

Then pick 1 area within that category that will help you improve, that you can make a pre decision on and plan ahead.  

A couple examples could be:

Health 

•  Meal plan
•  Meal prep 
•  Work out routine written out. 

Family

•  Plan 1 night each month you can take one of your kids on a date (pick the day time and where you’ll go and what you’ll do)
•  Do the same for your spouse. 

Finance

•  Create a written budget so you decide where your money goes 
•  Decide how many nights each week you’ll eat out 
•  Cut up your credit cards so you’ve made the decision to not go into debt ahead of time.

One of the keys to this whole process for me is to write it out on paper.  See it in front of you and confront the reality of the steps that you’ll have to actually take.  But if you can block a chunk of time to make decisions ahead of time, decide when you’re going to decide to take some control back.  

I think we’ve all been with our spouse or a friend and ready to go out for dinner and the conversation goes sometime like.  “What do you want to have? I dunno what do you want to have?”  And back and forth it goes, frustration ensues and you end up eating a romantic dinner at McDonalds.   

As decision fatigue sets in look at the area of your life that is most affected by it, which is an individual thing and decide what area would relieve some stress if you planned ahead or let someone else make the decision for you.  Take it off your plate.  Or have the conversation with your spouse or family.  “I’m tired and feeling incapable of making this decision.  It would help me out if you just picked.”  Then be okay with the decision you control freak :)

If you are struggling with making decisions or coming up with a plan send me an email at [email protected].  I’d love to connect get on a call and get a plan together with you.

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DEEP BREATH…Hold…Exhale

Darren