#96 - Fixing Decision Fatigue

Decision fatigue is not just an annoying buzzword, it is the reason so many smart, motivated people feel stuck. When every meal turns into a debate and every gym session starts with “what should I do today?”, you burn through willpower before you even begin. We get honest about how that mental drain shows up in real life, and why more options rarely leads to better results.

We break down the simplest fix we know: build defaults. A short rotation of breakfasts, predictable lunches, and a flexible family dinner can make healthy eating feel automatic without forcing everyone into full-on weekend meal prep. We also talk about the “protein problem” people think they have, and why the real issue is usually overthinking, social media noise, and chasing perfect recipes instead of putting straightforward protein on the plate.

On the training side, we look at the difference between structure and chaos. A clear workout programme saves time, creates progression, and stops you drifting around the gym with no direction. We also touch on automation, including how AI tools can remove tiny daily decisions, and why paying a coach is often a transaction for time, clarity, and headspace more than anything else.

If you want less stress and more progress in your nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle, give this a listen. Subscribe, share it with a mate who overthinks everything, and leave a review with the one decision you are going to automate this week.

Got questions? simply email or dm us with those questions

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Transcript

Welcome To Gen Pop

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey guys, you're listening to the Gen Pop Podcast with me, your host, Larry Doyle. Each week I'm gonna bring in friends, guests, and experts to help enhance your health, fitness, and wellness journeys. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversations.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

You are welcome back to another episode of the Gen Pop Podcast, where this week, co-host Daniel and I I don't know what we're talking about because I didn't lock down my page before I started. I'll just start this again.

Decision Fatigue In Daily Life

SPEAKER_01 0:31

You are welcome back to another episode of the Gem Pop Podcast where this week, co-host Daniel and I, we are going to be looking at decision fatigue. We think this is one of those ones where people just get way too caught up in looking at bits and pieces, whether it's a workout, whether it's a new nutrition plan, whether it's whatever. I've got my take on it, Daniel, but uh give me your take on it. How can we manage decision fatigue with people?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

I think people need to like just make things as simple as possible and remove them other choices they have to make, like day to day and week to week. Um, and a lot of people, and I speak to this about with clients an awful lot that you know there are going to be people, it's be very easy for coaches to say, like, just fucking meal prep at the weekend, it's grand. It's like, but that's not realistic for everybody. And it's probably realistic for like a small portion of people, realistically. But you can still have like a plan. You could still actually just have some bit of structure there that's that's gonna be enough to reduce decision. Like, because if you're every single day thinking, what'll I have for breakfast, what will I have for lunch, what'll I have for dinner, what will I have for snacks, and then you're going through the presses, you're trying to figure out like what'll I get inside in the canteen, what'll I get in the shop, you're constantly going to be like draining your mental capacity. Whereas, like if you said, Okay, I'm gonna have like say three to four breakfasts on rotation, I know in the canteen they usually have these choices. The shop I go into like has this pre-chopped fruit already available, it has protein shakes that are ready there. There's a deli there that I can actually ask them to kind of make a sandwich the way I wanted to make it, so they were just grabbing one out of the fridge. You're kind of give yourself like options, like you don't have to prep the meals, but you can still plan the meals, you can still plan like some bit of structure for your week. So, like I think if you can just remove like all these kind of like daily decisions that you're you're making every single day, it's gonna make things a lot easier for you. So, like if you can just see like what are you doing regularly, you can just like refine these a

Build Defaults And Automate Choices

SPEAKER_00 2:20

bit more. And like I think that's where um like AI and all this kind of stuff is becoming a lot more useful for people because people are freaking out over AI, like say people are doing X, Y, and Z with AI, but like AI is just like a tool to make life easier for you, realistically, if you look at it. Like if you looked at things you were doing, like say adding meetings to your calendar, you could probably set up AI to just like go through your emails, say, like, right, this invite came in, it's just going to get automatically added to my calendar. That's one less decision you have to make every single day because it's being automated. That's the exact same approach you should take to like your week, your day, whatever it is. It's like just automate as many things as you can so that you're kind of like making that decision once, and then it just is something you just dip into every now and then.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

It's just reverting to default mode. Like I know that I have multiple breakfasts that I go through, like there's two or three. And should I open the free and but like, do you know what? I couldn't be arsed about eating scary yogurt this morning because I've had it for the last, you know, four thousand mornings in a row. Cool. I have that automated thing. I'll just go omelet. Cool. That's done. I know the ingredients, I know the measurements, I know what I need to have, I don't need to go weighing it. I know exactly what it looks like, I know exactly what it tastes like, I know exactly the response that I'm gonna have from it. So the amount of like not even just the decision fatigue of prior to it, but also the fatigue of I need to go weigh that, I need to go track that, need to go do the thing, don't really know how I'm gonna respond to it. Like it's like gambling every time. It's like, I don't know what this is gonna be like. I like, and maybe I'm a bit of a control freak. I I am a control freak, okay. Let's say that straight out. But it's like at the same point, I like knowing that it's a predictable response. I like knowing that that is one less thing I have to think about, as opposed to like could you imagine you get in your car and I'm like, I don't know where I'm going. I was like, I'm just gonna let the road take me. Some people like that, but if you've got shit to do and you need to go places, that's gonna create a lot of fatigue. I don't know which turn to take. I need to look it up. And imagine have to like Google search every single turn in the road that comes up in front of you. Like, that's gonna fucking that's gonna fry your head. And it's the same thing people that go into a shop or whether they start looking up like Instagram and TikTok for new recipes, new meals all the time. It just increases this decision fatigue. I don't think like we don't have a protein recipe deficiency now at the moment. Like people come and it's like, oh, how do I get more protein in my dad? It's just like put more fucking protein on your plate, like stop overthinking the whole thing. You don't need another 27 ingredient recipe because that's just more bullshit you have to deal with. It might be once to you know, nice to put it in once in a week as something just very different and a bit fancy, whatever it might be. But it's like just have that automated thing of a default for it's like, I know what I'm having, I know how it's gonna respond, and I know how I'm gonna feel from it. It's all very predictable and I know it's in line with my goals. Again, like people have said, would you not get bored of eating the same shit all the time? I don't have exactly the same shit all the time, it's gonna be different versions of it. But what I don't find boring is the amount of headspace that I have that's not been taken up by that fatigue. What I don't find boring is that I don't have to go track it. What I don't find boring is knowing the response I'm gonna have, that it's foods and meals that make me feel really well. And then there's so much more headspace I can have back. And if I want to change it, I can change it. That's cool. Like my typical day, we talked about this before. I'll have three meals that are very predictable in my day every day. I've got a busy day, I don't have time to be looking up new fucking menus and meals every single time. The meal that's variable is the family meal. Every evening, six o'clock, five o'clock, we're sitting down with the girls, I'll have whatever's on, and that's cool. And it's gonna be some form of protein, some form of carbohydrates, some form of vegetables. Cool, it's a very traditional family meal. That will just slot into the rest of my meals, and it looks very similar then across the rest of the week.

Train With Structure Not Chaos

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Again, it's removing that decision fatigue for people, but it's the Steve Jobs approach to nutrition and health and lifestyle. You know, if you have, if you go into the gym every single day, what am I gonna do today, Batman? You know, it's like, what are we gonna do today, pinky? It's like, try take over the world brain. It's like, you know, you go in and it's like, I haven't a clue. Oh, look, there's a chest press. Oh, look, there's a leg carl, and you're just hopping around from one store to the other. There's no meaningful progression in there as well. Some people like that, they're not gonna be ones who progress. And again, I think when you can settle that, there's much more headspace, mental focus, clarity that you've got on what you're doing. It's very direct and driven towards a purposeful outcome that you're having as well. And I think it's gonna save people so much more time and headspace. I am one, and I don't know if you're the same, I'll procrastinate over the smallest and most meaningless shit. I could have something in my basket in Amazon that's worth like four euros, and I'll research and review it and like fuck around on it. That's ultimately procrastination. I don't think it's like a lot of decision fatigue that's been created with it. But there's way too much energy being put towards that and looking up reviews about this fucking pen holder or whatever the hell I'm going to get. But imagine if you had that for every single decision and choice within your day-to-day, you would get nothing done. That's just like so much more time and effort that's put into a lot. Like, what do you what do you automate on a day-to-day basis? And I know this answer already, but let's just share it with the people.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

I think like similar to you, like food choices, like I would automate that as well. Like um, it it just makes life so much easier. And like I was I think like meal prepping for like the past like routinely probably for like the past seven, eight, probably eight years, because like it I it was just something that I was doing because I was working and it I was bringing my lunches with me, but like I started exclusively working from home in June last year. Meal prepping never changed because it just it saves me time and I know even if I am not meal prepping, I'm gonna be cooking the same meals anyway. So like why don't I just like do it once and then have it ready for like five days that I can just go take two meals out the freezer the night before, put them into the microwave whenever I want to eat. And like I'm saving so much time that I can focus, you know, working on social media, replying to clients, replying to emails, whatever it is, actually doing the stuff that I want to do. Like I am I hate cooking, for lack of a better word. In my opinion, cooking has the a pretty low ROI. Like I'm fairly simple when it comes to cooking, like I cannot understand why someone would like buy recipe books and like spend all this time prepping, preparing food, because like it's just it doesn't make sense to me because it's like I don't get a lot bigger amount of enjoyment from something that like you spend four hours cooking and prepping and stuff than I would preparing something that took me ten minutes. So it doesn't make sense to me to spend so much time on something that's not gonna bring me a whole lot of satisfaction. But then like things outside that, like obviously, like I have some bit of structure when it comes to like

Meal Prep And Cooking ROI

SPEAKER_00 8:54

my training. There's gonna be some bit of variability there because, like, say if I'm stuck for time, I might just adjust things, but it's still gonna have the same structure. I might just like look at it as I'm going to the gyms and like right, I'll just remove that, I don't need to do that, I'll focus on the main movements in and out, 40 minutes, that's it. Um but like there's so many things like you can automate that like you're doing day-to-day, like your um meetings for work and all this kind of stuff. Like you can automate like all your appointments, everything that you don't have to be like manually doing all this stuff every single day. Like people are spend so much time automating things then they could easily just like give it to someone else to control it. Like you can like micromanage all these little variables so that you actually can um you know get on with what you want to do. Like as you said, the example about leaving something in your Amazon basket, like you spend so much time researching that, you could just like literally type in somewhere like exactly what you want. Use ChatGPT saying, like, I'm looking for this, this is my specifications, this is my requirements, this is my budget, whatever, and that's going to make the decision for you, and you just go and buy it. Whereas a lot of people will just sit on the fence with everything and they look for like the perfect plan, whether it's a diet plan, training plan, best cardio, what's the most effective this, what's the most beneficial that, what's the fastest way to do X, but you're not doing the thing. Like, if you actually spent more time just doing it, you actually would get better results from it. And like this is something I've took me a long time to realise as well. Like, with um like I'm a hoarder when it comes to like different apps, and I'm always researching apps for this and that, and then I have to like look up videos on like how to use this app. But like the thing is you're learning about someone else's workflow, you're you're learning about how someone else uses an app. Whereas if you just like started using it and it figured it out over time, you're gonna just adapt to it over time, slowly build your own workflow, get your own systems in place. And that probably is the best way of doing it. But people are always so afraid of making mistakes along the way that they feel like I can't make mistakes, everything has to be perfect from day one. That's where people kind of fall apart when it comes to this decision fatigue because when they go into the shop, they're always thinking, shit, what do I get here? Because like I usually get, you know, when I'm when I'm preparing my meals, like the the sandwich I use, I use like low-calorie bread. They don't have low-calorie bread in the deli. What am I supposed to do here? I I don't know what to do when they freak out, and that's when they start to say, Fuck it, I'm just gonna take the day off and won't bother tracking today, I'll just get something from the hot counter and I'll get back to it again tomorrow. So I think if you can actually just like make manipulations on the fly based on like a rough kind of plan, a rough structure you have, you're gonna make life so much easier for yourself.

Stop Chasing The Perfect Plan

SPEAKER_01 11:32

And i I always like people to pull it back and reframe it for them, right? So again, it's like what's the cost of this decision fatigue? But and say, okay, time, okay, but time where? So that for me is now time that's not spent with the girls, it's time that's not spent with Kate, it's time not spent with hobbies and activities that I want to do. So now there's a bigger cost as opposed to just time, because now I have to spend more time doing the thing I don't want to do. And ultimately, like you, if I was to say to you, Daniel, I need you to commit like another seven hours a week to cooking, you're like, fuck that. Yeah. It's like, you're not gonna do it. Okay, so like when we can reduce that time spent on the thing, one, we get there faster, we get the result, we get the return quicker. Two, there's less decision fatigue, but now we get to spend more time, and if that's time doesn't have to be spent productively, it could be time that you're just sitting on your hole, doing nothing, watching Netflix, but it's not doing the other thing because now you've spent so much more time doing it. So, again, when it comes to your food prep, how simple can I make it? How repeatable can I make it? How enjoyable can I make it from that front? And then kind of okay, get those three aspects, find something in the middle that slots into that little diagram of it all. Now all of a sudden you've just got the thing done. Rinse and repeat it as long as you can till they get bored and fed up with it and pissed off it, then put in something else. And it just makes life infinitely easier. Um We could do loads on this one. It's like, but it's just people are wasting time. It's like we don't want to we don't want to waste we don't want to waste time on a podcast where we're like trying to get people to not waste time. But it's like just doing the thing is doing the thing, reducing the decision fatigue, increasing your clarity and focus, actually having a plan, having a purpose with it all. And this is again where people come to us all the time because they've they've eventually got to that point where enough is enough. They've spent so much time researching, they've spent so much time dicking around at just wasted time. And these are people coming to us who have a very high value

Coaching As Your Google Maps

SPEAKER_01 13:24

on their time. And now all of a sudden they want to outsource that and say, Larry, I want you to be my thinker. I want you to tell me what to do with nutrition, what to do with training, what to do with my lifestyle. I know I need to do things, but I'm thinking way too much. Just tell me the exact direction I need to go to get me to where I want to get to. And now all of a sudden, we're their Google Maps. We have them at point A, we want to get them to point B. What's the quickest, most efficient journey that we can get them to that? And that's ultimately what coaching will give people. It's like removing that decision fatigue for them. It's increasing their clarity, increasing their direction, but ultimately giving them more time back to do the things they want to do. They're spending less time food prepping, they're spending less time fucking around the gym, they're spending more time with their high-value objects that they want to do and things where they want to put their focus in. That's something that appeals to you. Get on the bottom, get on the hotter to us, and we can get you hooked up and remove all that decision fatigue for you as well, too. Daniel, anything else you want to wrap up on this one in terms of decision fatigue, or shall we fatigue ourselves further with decision?

Time Is The Real Currency

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, I think what you mentioned there about time is actually very true all across the board because when you really think about it, like when you're paying a coach or just anything in general, what you're actually doing is like you're making a transaction and you're buying time. Like because no matter what you're doing, like say if you're paying a coach, you're not paying a coach for the use of their app, you're not paying a coach for training, you're not paying a coach for a nutrition plan. You're paying them really for their time. And if you're saying going to a restaurant, you're going to a restaurant because you want to save time on cooking, you want to get something faster, you want to reduce the amount of time you spend going to the shop, whatever. Like, you're trying to save time. That's why stuff is called fast food, because you're getting something fast, it's quicker. And like that's why ultimately, like when you're working with a coach, you're paying for their time. So a lot of people are like, oh, but like this coach has this app, this whatever. It's like, but that's not really what's going to be beneficial to you. Beneficial to you is going to be like the time the coach spends with you, time you invest into the coach, and then how uh the coach manages their time. Because effectively, what we're trying to do is reduce the amount of time you spend spinning your wheels. So like everything is just a transaction and time. So I think at the end of the day, if you want to like get better results, you have to reduce the amount of time you spend doing like things that you shouldn't be doing and more time doing the things that you actually should be doing.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

100%. Like I couldn't agree with that more. And again, like it's ultimately buying people time back, buying their headspace back where they yes, invest a little bit short term. This is not just a plug for our coaching, um, even though it is a plug for our coaching, but at the same point, it's like invest your time wisely with how you can actually get the greatest ROI on that. And if that's actually not coaching, because if your coach is creating such a headache for you with everything and it's now creating more time and more decision fatigue for you, well then that's not gonna be beneficial. Let's get your ass out of there. So look at your time, look at the ROI that you're actually getting from it. What is giving you the best investment and the best return on that? And is it getting you there efficiently? Yes or no, then it's gonna give you that answer back in terms of what you need to do. Daniel, it's been a super productive episode as always.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Touch you guys soon.