Season 5 Episode 6: Decision Fatigue

What is Decision Fatigue?  And what can you do about it? In this episode of Coaching and a Cup of Tea with Mummabear, Master Certified Life Coach Melissa Wiggins drills down the basics into five actionable steps. Grab a cuppa and your notebook – there are gems in here!

Want More?

·      WATCH the hour-long Decision Fatigue video

·      DOWNLOAD the Decision Fatigue document

·      LISTEN to the Season 4 episodes on  Thought Detox and Ask for Help

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Melissa Wiggins:  Hello, lassies. Welcome to Coaching and A Cup of Tea With Mummabear. This episode is inspired by the three day easy summer webinar that I just finished. It was fire. I loved it. I loved every second of being around crazy, amazing, inspiring lassies and just giving them my brain for three days and giving them a beautiful work book and doing all of that for free, because summer can be challenging, and I wanted to make it as easy as possible. 

            One of the things we spoke about was decision fatigue. All right. Lassies, that is what this episode is about. Stay tuned, listen all the way to the end, because I'm going to tell you about some free information that I have available for you on this topic. I have a tool that is going to help you not get to the point of decision fatigue. Okay?

            One of the things I talk about in Empowered Life a lot with the lassies is, listen, the only way that your company will not make it, the only way your job in corporate leadership will not make it is this, burnout. Burnout. It is not because you're not smart enough. It is not because you don't work hard enough, you don't have good enough ideas. It is none of those things, lassies. Okay?

            What it is is we get burned out. How does that happen? We get overwhelmed. How do we get overwhelmed? Decision fatigue. All right. I have done so much research on this topic. I am going to give you my brain and everything that I know about decision fatigue in the most concise, easy way that I can explain it, you lassies know that is my heart. I love doing the research, I love taking big complicated subjects, reading lots of books, reading articles and turning them into something that you can take away as a tool. Okay? 

Find the FULL transcript here:  Season 5 Episode 6: Decision Fatigue  

Transcript

Melissa Wiggins:

Hello, lassies. Welcome to Coaching and A Cup of Tea With Mummabear. This episode is inspired by the three day easy summer webinar that I just finished. It was fire. I loved it. I loved every second of being around crazy, amazing, inspiring lassies and just giving them my brain for three days and giving them a beautiful work book and doing all of that for free, because summer can be challenging, and I wanted to make it as easy as possible. 

            One of the things we spoke about was decision fatigue. All right. Lassies, that is what this episode is about. Stay tuned, listen all the way to the end, because I'm going to tell you about some free information that I have available for you on this topic. I have a tool that is going to help you not get to the point of decision fatigue. Okay?

            One of the things I talk about in Empowered Life a lot with the lassies is, listen, the only way that your company will not make it, the only way your job in corporate leadership will not make it is this, burnout. Burnout. It is not because you're not smart enough. It is not because you don't work hard enough, you don't have good enough ideas. It is none of those things, lassies. Okay?

            What it is is we get burned out. How does that happen? We get overwhelmed. How do we get overwhelmed? Decision fatigue. All right. I have done so much research on this topic. I am going to give you my brain and everything that I know about decision fatigue in the most concise, easy way that I can explain it, you lassies know that is my heart. I love doing the research, I love taking big complicated subjects, reading lots of books, reading articles and turning them into something that you can take away as a tool. Okay? 

            The last couple of episodes, I have been spending time talking about Empowered Life with my clients. Now you may be in the point where you're saying, "Well, maybe I'm going to apply to do Empowered Life" and you're going to make a decision. We make on average 35,000 decisions a day, lassies. A day. Over 200 of those are food alone. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably went onto Spotify or iTunes, wherever you're listening to this and saw a number of different podcasts that you loved and decided which one you were going to listen to. 

            That is only one of the decisions. Maybe the other decision was where am I going to listen to it? Am I going to listen to it while I'm showering? Am I going to listen to it on the way to work? Am I going to listen to it after I drop my kids off at summer camp? When am I going to listen to it? Should I download it for the plane? Right?

            Think about the number of decisions you made just to get to the point of listening to this episode. Right? Now I shared about this in the easy summer free webinar, because in summer, that is amplified for us working mamas. That is like times 100, right? Now we have did the kids go to camp? Do they not go to camp? Do I work in the morning before they wake up? When will I work out? Because now the kids are here. Should the kids have a play date or not have a play date? Then the nine million snacks you have to choose to make for the kids during the day.

            That is why I started researching the crap out of this topic and I will tell you, lassies, I had so many aha moments during this research. It was mind-blowing. It made so much sense to me, all of the things. I couldn't even believe how many things were making sense to me as a working mom.

            What is decision fatigue? In the webinar, I drew an example and if you listen to the very end, you will get access to the video. I have made that accessible for you and the tool. I drew on the video a scale and on the scale, down the side was decision and along the bottom was quality and there was a curve. The curve started really, really, really high and went all the way down. In other words, as the day goes along, the quality of our decisions goes down, down, down, down. 

            Like you go to the gym, and you get physically tired, your brain gets physically tired, mentally exhausted, and decisions are not so good. When you get to the 3rd set at the gym, and you're doing the weights, it's harder than the first set. That's kind of what our brain is like. Okay? Our brain is exhausted with all of the decisions and as the day goes on, the quality of our decisions is less. 

            What happens is we start to make poorer decisions and impulsive decisions and they're not great, lassies. What happens is we get overwhelmed and we get burnt out. One of the things I always talk about in Empowered Life is you, lassies, are not going to get burnt out on Coach Mummabear's watch. Okay? No bueno. I don't want that for you, because I have experienced burnout. When I was executive director of Cannonball Kids Cancer, which is the nonprofit I started because my son had stage four neuroblastoma, he is a survivor and doing well, but during that time, I lived out of a suitcase and traveled around the United States trying to fund pediatric cancer research. I just completely burned myself out and that allowed me to figure out ways to get out of that burnout but now I use that to teach people how not to burn out. How do you create that balance in your life.

            One of the things we're going to talk about in this episode is how do we habitualize decisions? In other words, outsource our conscious decision making to our subconscious. Let me repeat that, how do we habitualize some of our decisions? In other words, automate some of them, limit some of them. How do we outsource our subconscious, our conscious brain, to our subconscious brain? Okay? How do we do that?

            I'm going to tell you. I literally created a tool for you to use and I want you to use it, because I don't want you to burnout, because decision fatigue leads to exhaustion, impulsive decision making, agitation, feeling overwhelmed, et cetera. I don't want that for you.

            I have five ways that I believe will help you not have decision fatigue. Avoid it as much as possible. The fifth way is the habitualization and I will go over the tool in this episode. Number one is Ask for Help. I did an entire episode on asking for help, lassies. Season four, go listen to it if this is hard for you. This is hard for me. Okay? I struggle with this exact thing and I have really had to smash my ego down and just flipping ask for help. Okay? 

            One of the things I want you to do is list the people who can help you make decisions. Then list the specific decisions that they can help you with. Okay? Maybe that is your husband, and maybe he's going to help you decide what secondary school or high school that your kid is going to go to. Maybe, like me, it is your business teammate, so Samantha and I, my teammate, sat down and decided where are some ways that we can get some extra help when we have an intense time in the company? Who can help? With what decisions can help? Write those things down.

            Now remember, lassies, every episode, I am trying to give you something you can write down, something you can do, something that is tangible takeaway and do. I do not want to waste your time. I don't want you to listen and not have anything that is going to help or enhance or empower your life. Okay? 

            Number two, Say No. I talked about this in season four with the energy jar. That is a great episode for you to go back and listen to. Listen, I want you to list who can you say no to and what can you say no to. Again, I'm not saying this is easy, lassies. It's not. But what is it? I recently was asked to do a keynote speech and it was for a women's conference, which is totally up my alley and I love, but when I look at my energy jar, and I look at what I'm trying to accomplish with Empowered Life, my six month coaching program right now, there is no space for that, plus being a fun mom that I want to be. There just isn't. As a result, I said no. 

            What do you have room for in your life right now? What do you not? Listen, The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes is one of my favorite books. Okay? I am the woman and the lassie that will be like start before you're ready, go for it, do it. If you don't have enough energy and you keep saying yes to all of the things, decision fatigue is going to slap you in the face. Decision fatigue will lead to overwhelm and burnout. We're not going to do that, lassies. Okay?

            Number three, Optimize Your Decision Making. Now in the easy summer webinar that I did, I listed all of the research behind this and went into it in a little bit more detail but for the sake of the podcast, because I try to keep them short and concise for you, I'm just going to reference them real quick but optimizing your decisions is about really getting very intentional about when you make decisions.

            Now the reason I went into the research is I wanted to know the sort of why is it better to make decisions in the morning, why is it better to make decisions after you eat, but for your purposes, you need to know that that is what the research is showing. The research is showing that in the morning is when our best decisions are made and also after we eat. It was from a couple studies. One was on judges giving parole, 65% of parolees got a yes in the morning. That went to zero as the day went on. Then went back to 65% after lunch.

            I want you to think about a time when you made a bad decision and think about the circumstances around it but also think about times when you're tired, agitated, and hungry and the rule of thumb is not to make decisions in those times, because of the quality of the decisions but also so you don't hit decision fatigue. 

            All right. Number four, you are going to say this is so obvious, Coach Mummabear, why are you sharing this but, listen, the fourth one is Sleep. Make it a priority. Okay? I literally spent an entire year, my number one goal in an entire year was to get better sleep hygiene. I read about 20 books on sleep hygiene and all of the things to do, I started sleeping with the fan, I started sleeping with my phone outside of my room, I started taking melatonin, I started a whole ritual of having a shower, putting lavender diffused in my room, having a fan beside me when I sleep, and I will tell you, that I sleep better today than I ever have in my entire life. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Do I still get periods of insomnia? Yes. I do. But is my overall health and sleep hygiene better? 100%. Does that help with my ability to not run into decision fatigue? Yes, it does. 

            The question for you here is how are you going to prioritize sleep in your life? Write down that. List some things. Are you going to get a fan like me? Are you going to figure out something that will help you sleep better? Are you going to put your phone outside of the bedroom? That has been huge for me, by the way. Highly recommend not sleeping with your phone and your bedroom.

            Then number five is Habitualize Decisions. This is my favorite part of what I taught in the entire three days. Elizabeth Holmes, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg, all habitualized decisions. What they wore, what they eat, think about that, think about what they wore. They almost had a uniform. Steve Jobs had the black polo neck, Barack Obama had the same outfit. Barack Obama actually talks about this in a lot of interviews and how he had so many decisions to make that he needed certain things to be automated, limited, in order to use the decisions for things that were really important.

            What I did was I created this acronym, DONT, D-O-N-T. It's about not reaching decision fatigue but instead habitualizing decisions. The D is like a thought detox. If you remember in an earlier episode, I believe it was like season four, there is an entire episode on what a thought detox is and the things that you should do in order to thought detox. It is a much better way than just plain journaling. Go and listen to that episode. 

            Essentially, for this point, I want you to write down all the easy decisions you have to make in a week and list ways that you can habitualize them. Now you're going to get a diagram with this, so get excited, people. Okay? Mama Bear loves tools, loves acronyms. You are welcome.

            O, opinion. Whose opinion do I need? Whose opinion do I not need?

N, nice. This is not the time, lassies, to be mean to ourselves about not making good decisions. I don't want that. I want you to be nice to yourself. It's very, very important. This is not the time to start giving yourself a hard time, because you stood in front of the fridge and couldn't decide what to eat and instead ordered Uber Eats. This is not the time for that.

            T, list the times you want to make decisions and create a time frame around them. I'm going to give you some examples of some things that I have done that might help you get your brain going. Okay? 

            When I listed some of mine, some of the things I wanted to get some help with was making easy decisions about when I worked out. I kind of find it hard when I haven't scheduled in the workouts and I leave it to be me looking on my phone, seeing who's teaching, deciding if I like that yoga instructor and then either going to their class or not. What would ultimately happen is the workout would not get done and I would just work at my desk longer.

            In order to combat that, when I was doing my thought detox about it, I wanted to make the workout happen and in order to do that, what I did was I signed up at a little gym around the corner and I go the same time every single morning. I wake up at five o'clock, I work out at 5:30, I work out for 30 minutes, and I leave. Every day. 

            Now that is no longer one of my 35,000 decisions. What I did was I took the decision part away and instead I made it into a habit. Okay? The same thing I did in my business, with my podcast. Rather than deciding when will this go out? When will we put out graphics and soundbites, we made a plan. My teammate and I made a plan and we said the podcast will go live every Sunday, I will record the podcast on this day and on this day, the soundbite goes out. Done. That is no longer a decision we have to make. Those are examples of some that I used. 

            Another one that I struggle with is what to eat for lunch. When it's just a typical work week and I go downstairs when I'm taking a break, in between clients, I would just stand in front of the fridge and look at different things and not be able to know what to do. My health coach, Suma Carol, she taught me how to make salad jars. 

            Essentially, for the week, on a Sunday, I will make salad jars and those salad jars, I will eat one every day and you basically have your peppers, your cucumbers, tomatoes, whatever, carrots shredded on the bottom, lettuce on the top, when you're ready to eat it, these things last for like 10 days but when you're ready to eat it, some olive oil, some Himalayan pink salt, shake it up, I have a salad. Basically, all I do is fry an egg and add some avocado and that is my lunch taken care of for the week.

            I am not having lunch be one of the decisions that takes up energy. I habitualized that part of my life. Now, listen, if you're like, "Girlfriend, I don't want to eat a salad every day, that's not something I want to habitualize", I totally get it. No problem. But figure out for you, what those things are that are easy, that you can habitualize. 

            O, opinion. Right. When you're thinking about this, like for the podcast stuff, I needed to get the opinion of my teammate Sam. We needed to be able to coordinate calendars, make sure that it would work, right? With the home life, if it's maybe iPad time or something with the kids, do you need to speak to your husband about it? 

            Whose opinions do you need and whose do you not need? Write it down. Get very clear. We, lassies, sometimes think that we need the opinions of our best friend or sister or mom, our great-aunt Sally, our people on social media. No. No. You don't. I want you to get very specific on who you need opinions of and who you do not and write it down on this beautiful diagram I made for you. Okay? 

            Again, N is really simple. This is not the time for mom guilt. This is not the time to be thinking by giving these decisions away or asking for help or saying no, so in this box, I want you to write some very nice I am statements, I am a great mom, I am an amaze balls boss, I am a great wife, whatever those things are, write them in, because I don't want mom guilt to creep in here. Period.

            T, time. Okay. There was this really cool study and essentially the study took two groups. One group that they got to decide whether they wanted money or a holiday. All right? That was the decision. One group got one hour to make the decision. The second group got seven days. Okay? 

            When they went back, these numbers are so going to blow your mind. The group that had one hour, 90% of them were happy with their decision. 90%. Okay? The group that had a week, 70% were unhappy. Why am I sharing this study? Because giving yourself too much time to make decisions does not make a happier result. Give yourself a time frame.

            I literally do this even when I am deciding, lassies, what to watch on Netflix. I will give myself 15 minutes. If it's 7:15 and I'm trying to decide, I will say, "Melissa, you better pick something by 7:30 or you can just randomly select. The Netflix will pick it for you." Okay?

            This study proves my point. Too much time does not make better decisions. It doesn't make us happier with them. Give yourself a time limit. Decide when for you is the best time to make decisions. For me, I plan on a Sunday a lot of the week, most of it, so that I'm not making a lot of daily decisions. Right? I also make my best decisions in the morning and do my best work in the morning and I know that. 

            All right. I have tried to condense that big, massive topic of decision fatigue into the shortest, most concise episode I possibly can for you, lassies. I really hope you take the time to download this document, use it as a resource. It is there for you. Watch the video where I spent an entire hour going over this topic in much more detail. It will really help it sink into your subconscious. 

            I hope that you have an amaze balls day. I hope that you love this episode. If you did love it, please share it. Share it on social media and tag me @coachmummabear_ Have an amaze balls day.