Decision Fatigue: Fixing it for Professional Success
Successful People Are Minimalist — even if they don’t know it
Minimalism, Marie Kondo’s Konmari method, tiny living, tidy up — these are all becoming super popular now, especially for those of us who move and travel often.
In the last year, I’ve noticed
what a massive impact minimalism has made on my productivity and ability to achieve my goals.
That’s why I’m sharing minimalism and the KonMari method with you fellow hustlers on Medium.
Having less stuff (only the stuff you really love and need) makes it easier to do more of what you love, and not waste time or energy or space in your life on things that don’t make you truly happy, the way that only experiences and connecting with people and creating things can.
So many successful people choose to live with a minimalist approach, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, with his famous grey t-shirt and blue jeans, or Melinda Khal with her daily work uniform.
They do this to simplify their daily routine, to be able to focus on what is truly important.
Decision Fatigue — it’ll make you sick, fat, lazy, and depressed
Did you know there is actually a thing such as decision fatigue? According to this study,
the more decisions you make early on in the day, the worse decisions you’re going to make later on in the day.
In other words, if every morning you wake up and have to decide what to wear, what to eat, where to get coffee, and what you are going to focus on achieving that day, you may start off with a healthy breakfast and a special and delicious coffee.
However, by 6 pm you are likely going to be moving on to a bag of chips and chocolate for dinner, skipping the gym, and spending the evening procrastinating on the couch instead of enjoying yourself with friends or working on your pet project. It’s not that you have poor self control or are not truly committed to your goals. It’s simply that you used up your good decision making abilities early on in the day.
Not worried about having relaxed evenings with poor decisions? What if I told you that even your afternoon decisions at work are probably also getting affected.
Simple Way To Buy More Decisions
Whether you are building your own business, or just hustling it out for a promotion at work, you could definitely benefit from making better decisions where it counts.
Consider adopting some minimalism into your daily life, and start with your closet — the place that you are guaranteed to save yourself at least a few decisions every day.
To “minimalist-ize” your closet, you simply need to go through it entirely, and one-by-one decide which items to keep, which to sell or donate/give away, and which to throw out.
The 3 Simple Steps
Step 1
Start by taking everything out of your closet, and organizing everything into piles. A pile for jeans, a pile for sportswear, a pile for t-shirts, a pile for sweaters, etc. Once everything is in piles, you can easily see how much you have of everything, and this will help to you get rid of items you don’t wear often. For example, if you have a massive pile of shorts, but can’t remember the last time you wore shorts, you know you should probably just pick one or two to keep, and get rid of the rest.
Step 2
Start organizing into your keep, sell/donate, and throw out piles. Go through each of your piles one by one, and when picking up each item ask yourself:
- Does this fit?
- Do I feel attractive and comfortable in this ?
- Can I wear this in at least 4 outfits/situations?
I guarantee you will be surprised at how many items in your closet you don’t actually need in your life, and was taking up space.
After having gone through everything once, I always like to go through my “keep pile” once or twice more to make sure I really am only keeping what I need.
Aside from my gym clothes, I keep all my clothes to a simple colour scheme — only black, grey, white, and a few blue pieces. This means that I can pair everything with anything, and can have that many fewer items in my closet. Daily I stick to the same 3 outfits (depending on the weather), but I do keep a bit more clothes in my closet for my “leisure days” when I feel like expressing myself more or dressing up.
Step 3
Time to put everything from the keep pile back into your closet. How you do this is also important, since storing your clothes in a neat way that it easy to see will make it easier to keep tidy, and feeling light. You might want to learn how to fold clothes in the KonMari way here.
Next, you of course need to deal with all the items that you want to sell and donate. You may be tempted to just donate them all to just already be done with this exercise, but if you have some space in a storage closet or locker to store the items for the next couple weeks, I encourage you to use one of the following ways to make some cash off all those items that no longer serve a purpose in your life.
Cash For Your Bad Decisions
Selling your unwanted items is surprisingly easy now since you don’t have to take pictures with your 12 megapixel camera, upload it to your computer via usb, and then take hours making eBay listings and going to the post office to mail them.
Now it’s a matter of snapping a pic with your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy (those are the only 2 phones in existence, right?), and saving it as a listing on an app. Then waiting for someone who will come to wherever you are to buy the item from you — home, work, grocery store, etc.
Here are my favourite places to go to after I’ve done a clean sweep. I used to only do these kinds of clean-sweeps and list items when I knew a trip or move was coming up, but now I have make it a regular habit to go to selling apps and sell used clothes online anytime I buy a new piece of clothing, and even when I am just doing the laundry.
1. LETGO
2. CAROUSELL
3. VARAGE SALE
4. FACEBOOK GROUPS OR MARKETPLACE
5. POSHMARK
6. MERCARI
7. OFFERUP
If you liked this hack, show me some love with a 👍🏼, & a comment ✍🏼 & share🤳🏼.
Yours or someone else’s,
👩💻 Anna (Ania)
* be sure to follow me to keep up with my content: YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook.
First published on my blog.
