Welcome to the Ambitious, introvert podcast, created especially for introverts, empaths and highly sensitive entrepreneurs to help you build, grow and scale a successful, sustainable business. I'm your host, emma Louise Parks, business and mindset coach for ambitious introverts. After 17 years working as an air traffic controller the ultimate fast-paced, high-stimulus, extrovert friendly role my mission now is to show introverts that they too can create big results and success because of who they are, not in spite of it. I focus on introvert, friendly business and marketing strategy to help you switch overwhelm for clarity, confidence and clients. Hello, my ambitious introverts, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Emma Louise and this is the first solo episode I have recorded in quite a while. I think it's been over six months.
Speaker 1I really hope that you enjoyed the spectrum of guests that I shared over the summer. It was a very intentional decision because I knew that I wanted to take a lot of time out of the business this summer, so I spent much more time in Q1 and Q2 batching the podcast recording with guests. I was doing three or four guest episodes in a day to make sure that we had enough to cover all the way through until the end of August, and now it's the last week of August that I'm recording this just before it gets released, and it's so nice to be back with you for a little bit of solo September podcast action. So I really hope that you are well. I hope you've had a great summer and I'm actually going to do a bit of a mini series starting today. This was inspired by a dear client of mine and actually many, many clients before, but something really hit me when I was having the discussion the other week with this particular client about decision fatigue.
Speaker 1Now, it's something that we hear, it's a term that we hear a lot about, but how does it actually affect us? Does it affect us any differently? As intro, the answer is yes. What is it? What does it mean? Is it a bad thing? Is it a skill? Is it something that we can learn? Like all of these things? Because what I've noticed is when people have to make decisions about something not that important, they would rather just not make the decision, because even that can feel really, really heavy. So I am in a unique position, I think, to discuss this.
Speaker 1Many of you know I was an air traffic controller before this for many, many years, and I can't think of another job where people make so many decisions. I made literally thousands of decisions each shift, if not tens of thousands, because it's a constant micro decision making role with, let's just say, I had 10 aircraft under my control and I had to get them going in certain places in certain directions, keep them all safe. There are so many ways that could happen and I had to decide first of all what's the overall plan, and then I have to decide all kinds of things like does this one need to be slowed down against this one? If it does need to be slowed down, what speed does it need to be slowed down to and when do I need to do that? Do I need to do that now or do I need to do that in 10 miles time? So that was like the dialogue in my head constantly as a controller, and it's interesting because the standing joke is don't ever ask an air traffic controller where to go for dinner because at the end of the shift, decision making capabilities out of the window completely. So decision fatigue is something that I have lived with and recognised for almost 25 years now and it plays out the same way in our business and it plays out the same way in our personal development.
Speaker 1And what I will say is that your decision making muscle is exactly that. It is a muscle. It's numerous parts of your brain that work together and there's a whole algorithm about decision making that I'm not going to go into here, but there are many books, papers around it. But basically our brain works in the same way over and over again each time it makes a decision, whether that decision is do I want to add fries to my order? Or whether that decision is should I buy this house Like they can be such disparity in what we are deciding to do. But actually the process is the same. So what happens is, after an amount of decision making, this muscle in our brain becomes tired. It's like, yeah, I'm kind of had enough now, the same way that any muscle, if you work it too much, would get tired. So that is to say being good. Quote unquote.
Speaker 1A decision making is not a innate talent that you're born with. It's not necessarily a skill that you can cultivate. Get entired, and either making bad decisions or not making a decision at all because it's just too exhausting is very, very normal. It's completely human and is exactly why, as an air traffic controller, I was limited to working for 90 minutes and then I had to have legally a 30 minute minimum break because I couldn't sit there for, say, four hours making all those decisions one after the other, and I remember getting to the end of very busy shifts, especially if it was an afternoon shift. I was finishing at 10pm. You know that's late for me. I want to be in bed and sometimes thinking I just don't want to make another decision here and that's how it feels. So I get it.
Speaker 1And the feedback from this client the other week was oh, I really want to make EFT tap in a part of my regular practice, but I go on to YouTube and there are so many videos that I'm overwhelmed, so I end up doing none of them. And luckily I had an answer for that because I have a hack. I have many hacks in my life where I don't have to make as many decisions, which I'll be sharing over the next few weeks. But it made me think you know, if this client is struggled with it and I've seen previous clients struggle with it as well let's bring it to the podcast, talk about it here and see if it can help you guys listening to. So I looked in my research for this. Many places like, I say, some medical papers. There are books that I've read in the past that I skimmed back through the notes of, but I actually saw this great description on Wikipedia and it says Decision fatigue is thought to be a result of unconscious psychobiological processes and is a reaction to sustained cognitive, emotional and decisional load, as opposed to a trait or a deficiency, which basically means when you make lots of decisions all through the day, those processes get tired and sustaining that level of decision making is not possible.
Speaker 1So I have talked about this before with health coaches where they say when people pre-plan their meals, they stick to their diets way better and it's simply because of that, because if they're out at work all day, they're making these decisions and they come home and the next decision is what do I want to eat? And that muscle is tired, that muscle is going to go, you want take away, you want pizza, you want whatever. If the meal's already there, it's already prepped, it's already ordered whatever and there's no decision to be made, they are way more likely to make the healthy choice. So let me say this can play out in a lot of different ways, but it definitely plays out in our business. Now the reason that it matters is when it comes to our self mastery, our self leadership, all of the I'm going to say the skills that we do want to cultivate in order to have successful businesses that are sustainable. It's really important that we have processes in place to support us so that we are not spiraling out because we literally can't make a simple decision Now at.
Speaker 1Energy, as introverts, is the most important currency. I would say, even above time. Many productivity experts and many business coaches out there will be like times, the only thing you'll never get back. Yes, but if your energy is so depleted, can you do anything constructive with that time? Is it valuable? Time is equality? Are you going to do your best work? Probably not. So for me, as an introvert, I know that it's energy first, because when I have the energy the time is insignificant I can get so much done. So this intentional use of our energy is really key, really really key to our long term success, and if we're making multiple minor, unimportant decisions that will drain our energy, it's as simple as that.
The other thing that I see is, as I alluded to with this client at the start, we end up not doing things just because making that first decision feels impossible. So, whether it is look, I'm here, I'm sat, I'm ready to do some EFT, but I just don't know which video to choose, or I've opened my journal, but I just don't know where to start and it's too hard to come up with something, so I'm not going to do it. On the more strategic side of business, I see this play out a lot in software or tech. So a client may know that they need to start an email list, but they Google and they come up with a blog post. That's like the 39 top email software providers, and I mean, even the title of that would just have me exhausted. And then they feel like, oh my gosh, I've got to look through these 39 providers and I've got to make a decision, and there's the one, perfect one, and how am I ever going to find it? And of course, they just don't do it. So what I found in that instance, and like in the ambitious introvert academy, is much easier for me to say. Here are three options and here are the pros and cons. Just choose, just choose from these three, because if you start researching and looking at more and looking at more, the decision is just going to feel so heavy.
Speaker 1So, like I say, it's this cultivation of the quality of our energy and knowing that many, many decisions, whatever the severity of them, even like oh, do I get iced coffee or hot coffee? Like, will we make in these decisions all day, every day, it has an impact. It has a massive, massive impact. So, like I said earlier as an air traffic controller, there are things to mitigate this. That's the reason that air traffic controllers have legally enforced breaks of very regular intervals. It's the reason why there's always someone else nearby them. It's the reason that a lot of systems have been developed and they'll be different in all kinds of environments. So, whether it's like air traffic control in one part of the world to another, they will have systems and procedures that just work because you don't have to make too many decisions.
Speaker 1So when you give someone a big piece of airspace and a lot of airplanes, technically the worlds that are oyster, they can put them anywhere, but the issue with that is it means a lot more decisions. So when we narrow it down and it's like, okay, this aircraft that flies this route, here are the things that we generally do with it. Sometimes we'll point it towards this place or sometimes we'll point it towards here. What that does is. It means that, rather than thinking I could put this airplane anywhere, what should I do? Air traffic controllers' brains have a way of going right. Should I go left or right with that? That's a much easier decision. It's still a decision. It's still taking energy, but it's much easier to make because there are parameters around it. That's one example.
Speaker 1Another example is the whole Obama, steve Jobs, mark Zuckerberg wearing the same outfit or owning two different color suits, two different color ties, two different color shirts in the case of Obama, but they all coordinate so they don't have to think about what they're wearing. Now, these are people that are, in Obama's case, was making very big decisions on a daily basis. In the case of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who are in a visionary role where their mental bandwidth, their creativity, their inspiration is key to driving forward, to what they do. When you can take the decision out of that, that makes a big, big difference. The more things that you can deem quote, unquote unimportant. Maybe what you wear is very important to you. If you are someone that's very into expressing yourself through your style, you think that's a terrible idea. I'm never doing that, but that's the whole point, right.
Speaker 1We can cultivate these systems for ourselves, based on what's important to us and what's not For them. What they wore wasn't important, I know. For me, I used to choose my clothes the night before if I had to get up early for work, because the last thing I wanted to do was wake up at 4.30 in the morning and have to think. I also always had the same breakfast, the same coffee, because, again, just didn't want to have to think. If I've got to get up at that time, I just need to do what I need to do and get to work in a fresh mental state. So, where we can cut these decisions out, it helps us no end, and I'm going to be sharing way more of those in the next few episodes of how you can create these systems within your business to minimize the decision making, and also in your life as well.
Speaker 1So decision fatigue is, as you can tell, something that I feel very strongly about. I think it's very important for introverts to understand the concept. I think it's very important to recognize that it's not something you're good or bad at. It's something that happens to everyone this deterioration and the ability to make decisions after a sustained period of doing so is human nature. It's very, very normal. So instead of beating ourselves up or instead of thinking how can I get better at this, the way to get better of it is to take out a lot of the decisions on a day-to-day basis and have those parameters in place. It makes things so much easier, so much easier. So do tune in and join me over the next couple of weeks when I'm going to be sharing, like I say, some of my own personal examples of the things that I have in place to eliminate decision fatigue wherever possible and keep my bandwidth up and keep my energy in a place that I can use it for whatever is most important to me at the time.
Now, before we wrap up, I just want to share that the quiet power mini-mind is starting at the end of the month. This is a very new way of working with me that I'm running for eight weeks. I will pop the link in the show notes, but if anything I've talked about today has resonated with you about yourself, leadership, about your energy, about understanding where you want to use it and what's important to you and what isn't, this could be the program that could really set you up with solid foundations to be able to make those decisions and to be able to cultivate that system just for you. As I say, the link will be in the show notes and I will be sharing a little bit more about it over the next few weeks, but for now, it's definitely one of the most accessible ways of working with me that I've ever offered and I'm really, really excited. I love the energy of running a small group and I'm excited to bring programme that really focuses on our self leadership and self mastery as introverts rather than business strategy. So that sounds like it could be interesting to you.
Speaker 1Do pop to the show notes and check it out, but for now, thank you for tuning in. It's so great to be back with solo episodes and I will see you in the next few weeks where I will be laying it all out and sharing all of the different ways that I keep my decision making to an absolute minimum. Thank you for listening to this episode of the ambitious introvert podcast with me, emma Louise Parks. If you enjoy this show, please, please subscribe, rate and leave a review on iTunes as a thank you. One lucky reviewer each month will win a 60 minute one on one coaching session with me, where you'll get the clarity and confidence to attract your ideal clients. And if you know someone who could benefit from listening to the show, then please do share and help me reach as many fellow ambitious introverts as possible.