Teachers, school leaders, counsellors, everybody who works in education. Let me ask you this question. Do you find this speaks to you? Does this happen to you? At the, in the afternoon or towards the end of the day, you are just fine. done. It's not just that you are emotionally and physically exhausted, but you feel like, oh my gosh, you cannot make one more decision.
Maybe you hold it together through the end of the day at school and then on your way home, oh, let me stop off for a drink. Pick up something for dinner and you're just aimlessly wandering through the aisles. You cannot make a decision and you get home and Okay, I want to relax. I want to watch some television.
Let's do some Netflix and you just, you're flicking through and you just Before you know it, it's time to go to bed. You didn't even decide on anything, right? It just feels like you cannot make one more decision. Your brain is fried. That, my friends, is Decision fatigue. It is rampant in education as a profession because we make so many decisions every single minute of every single day.
So in this episode, we're going to do a dive into it. What is decision fatigue? Decision fatigue. Why is it harmful? But most importantly, because I'm all about the empowerment, what are five proven strategies to help you with this? And I'm going to throw in a bonus strategy at the end that you are not going to want to miss.
I'm super excited to dive into this with you. So I will see you. on the inside. Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries, and achieving better work life balance. If you're passionate about education, but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.
I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show.
All right, here we go. You may have seen the meme or the, you know, the Instagram post that says that teachers make as many decisions as neurosurgeons in a day. Well, I've got to tell you something. Um, I, I don't know how many decisions neurosurgeons make and of course those decisions are life or death, but I will tell you this about neurosurgeons.
When they're doing their surgery, they do not have the phone. ringing. They do not have constant interruptions. They don't have nurses messing around, flicking around scalpels and instruments, um, vying for class clown. They don't have constant interruptions, fire drills, people asking to go to the bathroom, interrupting all those things, right?
We've got to make our decisions while all that drama is going on. So there was a study. It was before Covid. So I know the decisions. Since then have got more that said on average. I don't know how they figured this out. They said that a teacher makes 1500 decisions a day and that was based on four decisions a minute, which might seem like a lot, but I'm every 15 seconds.
You're not even aware of it. We make so many decisions, right? Think just think. Just the academic needs of the students. You are 32 kids in front of you, some of you got 100, 200 kids a day. If you're in high school, all the different differentiation that needs to happen. You've got to take into behavioral decisions like, you know, what am I going to ignore?
What What am I going to acknowledge, um, you know, the student who just got up to sharpen their pencil and I'm going to let that slide and not lose my flow? Or am I going to address it? Right? You've got constant, you know, interruptions for students. What are you going to do about that? Even, you know, Got to be thinking about their social emotional needs.
We always have our radar going, like who's upset, what's happening, you know, when, when the play, the end of, of recess, you know, we got to play CSI crime scene investigators to figure out, you know, unravel that drama. You know, while you're trying to teach and do your best instruction, maybe your Apple watch or your phone is pinging, um, on a classroom app, you know, deciding, do I answer that?
Do I look at that? Do I deal with that now? It's just a lot. It's constant, constant, constant. So it is no, um, surprise, really, that, um, teaching is up there with the, um, most affected professions by decision fatigue. So if you, you know, if you want to google what is it, it will say decision fatigue is a deteriorating quality of decisions.
So you're making worse decisions, basically, if you can make any, after a long day of decision making, right? So you might find that decisions that you're making at the end of the day aren't as great. In my particular case, it wasn't the decisions weren't as great. It was like, I just couldn't make any. Um, I, I just found myself really, um, you know, stressed, hard pushed to make a decision.
Um, I also suffer from low blood sugar a lot. I find it very hard to make a decision if I have low blood sugar. And so I think some of that was coming into play at the end of the day too. But, um, so, um, nurses suffer a lot from this. People in, um, The judicial system apparently suffer a lot from this and certainly so do teachers.
All right, so why is it not good? Well, obviously it contributes to stress and burnout. It can lead to irritability, increased anxiety, depression, brain fog, frog, brain fog, headaches, even digestive issues, right? It takes a toll on your body. But again, you are not making as good decisions. So there is lots of repercussions when we don't make good decisions, right?
And so here are some of the symptoms of it. Not just the brain fog and that feeling that like at the end of the day you're just spent, but it can be things like procrastination, Right? You just feel like you just, uh, you wait to the last possible moment to make a decision about something, right? Or else, worse than that, you make a hasty decision that is, you know, unsupported, unresearched, whatever.
You want to just like, let's just get this over with. Let's just get this out of the way. Here's what I decide. Right? So kind of just a hasty decision. You can simply avoid it. Just like you know what? I'll figure that out later. It's kind of like the procrastination, um, indecision, which I talked about, just like you, you can't seem to make up your mind.
Um, And then you have this other side of it is where if you just start overanalyzing your decisions to the point of, do you ever hear this term, analysis paralysis, right? Like, Oh my gosh, I just, I got to keep looking at all the options, all the options, all the options. You just can't make a decision. So obviously all of that slows you down, wears you out and contributes to your burnout.
So what are we going to do about it? I don't like to be doom and gloom. I'm about empowerment. So here are five tips, then I'm going to throw in a bonus tip. So the first thing is, and you know, it comes down to habits a lot of the time, right? But minimize the number of decisions you need to make. Now, in the classroom, the more processes and procedures that you have, student led activities, that's going to minimize the number of decisions you need to make.
But it starts off before you get to school. Meal prep, so if you want to meal prep your lunches for the week and have some kind of plan for what you're going to make during the week for dinner, so that you don't have to wait till you're so tired to make a decision, then just meal prep. Plan on the weekend.
When you're rested, when you feel like you have energy around decision making, plan out as much of the week as you can. Now, you may be aware of like, when you think of, um, Steve Jobs, what do you always think of? What's he always wearing? He's wearing a black turtleneck, or a black t shirt and jeans, right?
President Obama. The gray suit, right? Mark Zuckerberg, the gray t shirt, right? These are examples of three people who took the decision making out of what the heck am I wearing today? They just wore the same thing every day. Now, we probably don't want to wear the same thing every day, but for whatever reason, we want to express our personality or whatever, but just decide.
Maybe, you know, lay out, you kind of have a plan of what you're gonna wear, um, for the week. Okay, for me it was a pair of black capris, at least three days a week, change out the top. Not the same pair of black capris, although I could have got away with that too, but that was always kind of a safe bet for me.
So that is tip number one. Just minimize the number of decisions that you need to make. When you are fresh on the weekend, think about things in the week that you don't have to waste your time deciding. Meal prep, clothes, clothes for your kids, all those things. Okay. Number two. Have routines. Just like we're gonna reduce the number of decisions around meal prep, about clothes.
You know when you have that um, Precious prep period. You know, how many times it gets stolen because another teacher is out, there's no substitutes, you have to cover their class, or you get pulled into an IEP meeting, or at some kind of duty, right, but when we finally get the That precious prep period that we crave and we complain all the time.
I never have time to do anything at school. And then we just, there's so much to do. We don't know where to start. Same thing. We've wasted the whole prep period kind of maybe dabbling in this, dabbling in that, not doing anything because we couldn't decide. So for me, I always found it very helpful to kind of have a routine, right?
So for me, Mondays, I always put in grades. I waited till Monday because most assignments were due Friday and I didn't want to put input grades over the weekend because, lo and behold, Monday in would come all the late assignments and then it was annoying to have to go back and duplicate, find all those assignments.
We had a very un, wasn't really very set up user friendly, um, interface for putting in grades. So, I would always grade on Mondays. Tuesdays, Tuesdays, Tuesdays. I would always, if there were things during the week, emails or other stuff, kind of just busy work that wasn't urgent, I would try and do that on a Tuesday.
When I was still, could it wait till next Tuesday? You know, I'm still a little fresher at the beginning of the week, I could get it done quick. Wednesday and Thursday, I would always work on lesson plans. And grading and doing things of that nature, so that when Friday came, right, and if there was this miraculous Friday where we didn't have a meeting, I don't know why so many schools have an early release on Friday, okay, I get why they have the early release, but then they have meetings for teachers at the end of the week.
We're like, we're done. But if we had extra time on Fridays, like I really couldn't make any great decisions. I wanted to have some low stuff, low decision stuff to do, just running off the copies, doing all those things, getting, so if I had lesson plans solidly on Wednesday and Thursday, and then on Friday, it was just running copies, laying things out ready for the week.
Okay, so have routines. That's another way. It's all about minimizing the number of decisions. Okay, number three. A closing ritual. Now I have, um, I talked about closing rituals before. Um, but the closing ritual that I talk about, um, might be that you remember is the three things, the three best things about your day, right?
You're a joy detective, and it's one of the things you do before you go home, is write down the three best things about your day. It works as a pattern interrupt. And top of mind for you are the great things that happened that day. So when your family asks you, right, and during the day you're also setting your radar for like, Oh, that was nice.
This is good. Would this make my top three? All those things. Okay. So that's why I've talked about closing ritual before, but you may have noticed when I talk about that closing ritual, I also talk about three things. big pink sticky notes. Don't need to be pink. Any color you want. No one cares. But before I go home, I like to clear off my desk and I leave the three big sticky notes, which are the top three things I'm going to do in the morning before school starts.
And sometimes those are decisions. Right? I just tell myself, okay, it's I'm not like I have the low blood sugar or I'm just anxious to get out of here. I'm in a hurry. Like I will leave those three big stick notes on my desk and I would like, you know, that's a tomorrow decision. Or that's the first thing I need to do in the morning.
Right? So have that closing ritual. Set yourself up for that. Um, success in the morning. Okay. So, so far we've got to minimize the number of personal decisions like clothes, meal prep, that type of stuff. Number two, have routines. Now, I talked about it as far as, you know, what I would do on my prep periods or after school.
Right? So I didn't lose time deciding what am I going to work on. Okay. Um, I know a lot of people do that for their meals. You know, a lot of families. I know, taco Tuesday, pizza Friday, right? So if you're kids and you don't mind eating the same thing every week, um, And then that's also a good way to go.
Alright, the third one then is having this closing ritual. That when you're closing up for the day and clearing off your desk, or if there are things you haven't decided on yet, or you know you're tired, put them on the stick note. Decide on them in the morning. So that's gonna put into tip three. Number four, okay, which is make as many decisions as you can at the beginning of the day when you are fresh.
Okay, for me, as I said, I would tend to get low blood sugar in the afternoon and or just frazzled, decision fatigue, all the things I made better decisions in the morning. Now, here's something I always had a habit of. And for me, This, this really, um, touches on mindset. It touches on procrastination, uh, productivity.
It touches on a lot of things. And this is the idea of eat your problems for breakfast. So what does that mean? Eat your problems for breakfast. For me, that meant tackle. The least, um, kind of favorite task that you have. I'm trying to phrase this in a positive way. Um, tackle that at the beginning of the day.
Don't let it hang over your head all day. It drains your emotional energy. You ruminate. Let's say that you know you have to call a parent back about something. And you have the opportunity to call them early in the morning. Um, I always like to do that. One. honest to goodness, they'll keep you on the phone less time.
Everybody's busy in the morning, they're trying to get out the door. Or they're trying to get on with their day, they will keep you on the phone less time. But more important than that is you will not have it just that emotional talk. You know, when you go through your day and you're dreading having a conversation with your admin, Or a parent or a coworker, there's something that you're not really, you know, excited about having a discussion about and you will find yourself during the day.
If you haven't tackled it, you're running through these imaginary conversations in your head, right? You know, you're doing it. You're having these conversations. They'll say this. I'll say that this will happen. Typically, it's a worst case scenario, and you're getting yourself all worked up about something that might not even happen.
So Eat your problems for breakfast. Get it out of the way first thing in the morning. Make the toughest decisions. Have the toughest conversations at the beginning of the day. All right. So that's tip number four. Now tip number five is I know you're going to roll your eyes. You can like really? Yes, get enough sleep is so important.
If you're not properly refreshed, it is hard to make good decisions. Now when you're going through your day, you don't have the opportunity to have a nap now. So I would I was a really great power napper. I could get in a 15 minutes. I kept a huge, uh, you know, a moon pod is. It's like a really, um, overpriced, to be honest, a bean bag, but I had it in the corner of the room and I could slip it under my desk and lay into there and just power nap for 15 minutes.
But you know, most people can't. So during the day, take a quick break. If you're feeling like you can't make a decision, just go outside, get some fresh air, even if it's just three. Two, five deep breaths. Okay, find something to focus on for 30 seconds. Just a bird and a flower, a tree, a cloud, right? Anything just you have this idea of a one mindful moment, right?
One mindful minute, just get one mindful minute. Get some fresh air in your lungs. So even if you step outside just for one to two minutes, you might find that your ability, you've had a patent interrupt, you've given yourself a break, that your ability to make a decision will be better, okay? But anything you ever read about decision fatigue, the number one thing they're going to tell you is get enough sleep.
So, now you see why, uh, nurses You know, doctors, teachers, we're all people who don't get a lot of good sleep. We have a lot of things going on. Okay. Then here is your, your bonus tip. Right. And your bonus tip is really this. Allow yourself some grace. Just, I always say, with awareness comes grace. Choice. If you become aware, just notice this week as you go through your week, notice what is the pattern in the afternoon, later in the day, or when you get home.
Do you find it hard to make decisions? Um, is your blood sugar low? Is, do you find that this happens to a lot of teachers? Like you need to drink a water. Right? And so many of us, oh my gosh, for years in the classroom, I limited my water intake because there was literally, I mean, it's crazy, but it was literally nobody to cover me, you know, to go to the bathroom.
Okay, so do you need a drink of water? Do you, you know, what is it that you need? And something that you may need might be intentionally deciding, you know what, that's a tomorrow decision. Right? I'm fried now. That's a tomorrow decision. Okay? I, I do that a lot. I do that with problems I don't want to think about.
I don't want to drag around with me. Um, a lot of times I say, you know, that's a tomorrow problem. But as far as decision fatigue goes, there's nothing wrong with saying when you realize you're fried and you're thinking, you're starting to feel you're procrastinating or on the other end of the spectrum, just making a hasty decision because you just don't want to deal with it anymore.
Just allow yourself some grace and tell yourself that's a tomorrow. Decision. Okay, well, hopefully that is. good information for you. Maybe what I've done is help you put a name to something that you've noticed happens, but you couldn't really pinpoint and say what it is. So it really is a thing. It's not you being dramatic or having a personality defect or just not, you know, just not working hard enough or trying hard enough.
It's a real thing. It's a documented. Phenomenon is huge in teaching, so decision fatigue, again, it is going to be a huge factor in burnout and stress and other physiological symptoms if you don't try and get it under control. And my five tips for trying to do it are, try and minimize the number of decisions, Do them on the weekend, the meal prep, choosing of the clothes, having routines, knowing what day of the week you're going to do what, tasks that you need to do for teaching, okay, inside your classroom on your prep period or after school.
Tip number three, having a closing ritual, right, your top three tasks for the morning or they could be decisions, like I'll just, that's for tomorrow. Number four, Eat your problems for breakfast, right? When you've got a lot of energy in the morning, take care of all the tasks and all the decisions that need to be made while you have the energy so you don't drag them around with you all day or ruminate.
Number five, get enough sleep or take a quick break when you, um, Don't, you know, when you're starting to feel sluggish and you feel the symptoms of decision fatigue coming on, just outside, three deep breaths would do it. One mindful minute, find something to focus on. Typically something in nature, bird, flower, cloud, whatever.
And then always, always allow yourself some grace, right? With awareness comes choice. Start noticing this Start noticing what your trends are and you can, it's okay to say that's a tomorrow decision. Let yourself off the hook. You're going to decide that tomorrow. Okay, hopefully that was helpful. Um, a quick update.
I don't know when you're listening to this. Maybe this is, hopefully this has already happened. If you're listening, um, a few weeks, um, later. I am super close, super close as in just waiting for the final book proof on publishing my Beat Burnout with Better Boundaries book. Super excited for that. It's going to be an amazing resource for everybody.
It's going to be so affordable. There is no, uh, you know, oh, I can't afford it barrier that anybody's going to have. If I am still running an outro, Which is what happens after the episode that talks about the boundary blind spots, excuse me, quiz. Grab that. That way, if you take the quiz and you're like, uh oh, I've got some real work to do in boundary setting.
What, where should I go? You'll know that this book will be a great resource for that. If you want to get the quiz, it is gracestephens. com forward slash quiz. And until next time. Create your own path and bring your own sunshine.
