4 Ways to Eliminate Decision Fatigue From Your Life

Earlier this month I was visiting my friend Mike Harrington in Colombia. He’s living in a small town in the coffee region. The first day he was there, he met a cab driver he liked and trusted. So he got his phone number. Now Mike has a driver on call at any moment for about 20 bucks a week. And the cabbie is happy because he’s got regular cash-flow.

For Mike this means no worrying about parking, driving, insurance and more. Of course, it helps that it’s cheap as hell because he’s in Colombia. Within a few weeks, he’ll have someone to do grocery shopping, cook all his meals and more. That frees up an insane amount of decision-making capacity each week.

Dan Martell who has started and invested in multiple companies told me in an interview on the unmistakable creative that he hasn’t been to a grocery store in years, and has eliminated paper from his life. He doesn’t get mail and let’s be honest most mail is junk mail.

Elimination of low-value decisions was the start of how I optimized my life for deep work.

This isn’t about location independence or lifestyle design. It’s more about how we can eliminate mundane decisions that we make every single day, week, month and year of our lives in order to make space for things that actually matter.

1. EXTERNALIZE

First, let’s talk about externalization. The basic concept is that we need places to store information other than the brain. The brain is the one of the worst places to store information. This is why tools like Evernote are so powerful.

I’ll share some examples from my own life.

My car payment is due the same time each month. So I set a reminder on my phone that repeats 3 days before the bill is due and once on the day itself. It’s now there on indefinite repeat. And even better is to automate it along with every other bill you pay.

Haircuts are something most guys do once a month. But usually, it’s because we look in the mirror and think “wow, I look like shit. I should get a haircut.” So I put a monthly reminder on my iPhone that repeats. That’s it. I’ll never think about when to get a haircut again. In the grand scheme of things, a haircut is a really low-value task.

Another example is prescription refills. Have you ever run out of a med you needed and had to do an emergency scramble between your doctor and the pharmacy? After doing that more than once, I realized it was time to set it as a reminder and forget it.

By externalizing low-value information, you create space in your mind for high-value creative thinking. It’s what some people refer to as $10,000 an hour work.

The key is that you actually do what you said you would on the reminder days.

2. ELIMINATE

After you externalize a lot of information that is taking space in your mind, the next step is to eliminate as many decisions as possible from your life.

Most people wake up in the morning and they’re focused on what they’re going to wear, what they’re going to eat, and something else. All of these can be eliminated very easily, by planning what they’ll be and repeating them.

If you’re in a place where services like Google Express, Instacart, and Amazon Fresh are available, going to the grocery store seems like an absolute waste of time and energy. No grocery store means more to time to read, write, build a company or whatever it is that will add more joy to your life than a trip to the grocery store. Also, you might avoid all those impulse purchases.

I personally don’t enjoy spending time in retail establishments at all. Given the liberal return policies of nearly every online retailer, it seems like there’s really no need to ever go to a mall.

With a service like Earth Class Mail, you can kiss dealing with snail mail goodbye.

How do you figure out what to eliminate? A simple question.

What things do I do because I actually want to?
What things am I doing just because they’re the defaults?

As my friend Colin Wright t says, it’s important to question the defaults.

3. OPTIMIZE

If we’re going to design our lives, we have to start by designing our days. This more than anything comes down to a calendar.

Schedule time for yourself. The first 4 hours in the morning are completely blocked on my calendar. I never do meetings, phone calls or anything else during that time. It’s entirely focused on my priorities.

Schedule things you need to do and remember millionaire’s don’t use to-do lists. If you want to something to get done, put it on your calendar. To-do lists can become never ending. But an appointment on your calendar is finite. It starts and ends at a certain time.

We typically spend all day in reactive mode, responding to emails, tweets, Facebook messages, status updates and an endless amount of interruptions that we didn’t evolve to handle. It’s not just your inbox that is someone else’s priority list. Your entire life is starting to become someone else’s priority list when you’re always on and always connected.

Optimization more than anything is about being proactive, deliberate and guarding your time like it was worth a fortune because it is. Remember time is the only resource that’s not renewable.

4. AUTOMATE

I’m a big believer in the power of routines and rituals because they help increase creative output. But nearly all my rituals are about the elimination of decision fatigue.

• I eat the same breakfast
• I wear a black crew neck T-shirt every day (they match with everything)
• I do the same thing every morning when I wake up (meditate, read, write)

This frees my mind for the most important creative work I do which is usually writing, planning my upcoming book launch and working on the Unmistakable Creative.

It’s possible to take automation too far and become almost robotic. But I’m not talking about automating things you enjoy.

Here’s a simple rule: automate everything you consider a necessary evil that’s possible to automate.

At the end of the day reducing decision fatigue is about making time and space for the things that add more meaning and value to your life. This is just a framework and the application will be different for everyone.

I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.

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