Decision Fatigue
If it’s fashiony stuff you’re after today, there’s the Fabulous Festival over at Karina’s place. This post is barely related.
The following simple half- paragraph, from Reclaim your attention, at lifehack, started me thinking about what I’m calling “decision fatigue”:
The beauty of Three for One is you make a single decision - what the next three things you are going to do are - and then you do them. You make no more decisions, you tolerate no more distractions.
Lately I’ve been feeling a strong urge to decrease the number of decisions I am required to make in the course of everyday life.
Decision fatigue is when dinner gets delayed 45 minutes, as happened recently in our home, because nobody has the energy to decide which salad dressing we are going to have. And how many people have started feeding their families wraps instead of sandwiches, so they don’t have to face selecting a bread? Last night my hero almost came home without buying toilet paper, he was so overwhelmed by the number of choices. Thankfully he realized that wasn’t an option!
Anybody else experiencing decision fatigue? The truth is, the reason I’m posting this article today is because I couldn’t decide between several fashion topics.
But it occurs to me now, if you are experiencing decision fatigue with regard to getting dressed, you could try the uniform template concept.
I know exactly what you mean. I have longed for the days when women had 3 dresses, one of which was “nice”. How easy it was to decide what to wear!
Decisions about what kind of peanut butter to buy can give me a headache.:)
I don’t feel this way about fashion (my closet isn’t *that* big…) but I do in other things. Recently I’ve been doing the Nike thing: “Just do it!” without worrying too much over whether I should buy 45″ bleached or unbleached cotton muslin.
Mentally, I think we often shut down other options once we pick one, which is how we get into “ruts”. For example, I don’t think you would have had much of a problem picking a toilet paper. You’d probably buy the brand that you know is “best”. Whereas your husband doesn’t often buy toilet paper (I’m assuming here…sorry if I’m wrong!), so all the choices hit him at once.
Indeed!
I was astounded at the number of variants of microwave popping corn at the grocery store the other day. And could I figure out which one to buy?
You’re right, Oxanna, he doesn’t buy toilet paper often. But it’s the finding the brand that’s best that I think gets tricky. And then remembering it!
Oh, I’m so with you on that. My husband and I call it analysis paralysis. I believe he heard the phrase first in a business class, but it definitely applies to home matters as well. It does seem to pop up around dinner time. At home we normally just do our own thing because we have such different tastes, but when eating out it’s absolute awful.
It’s also probably one of the major reasons why I over-pack when traveling. Shopping is pretty tough sometimes, too, but my solution has been to take the stuff I think I want home and then decide what to keep or return. Fortunately, I live pretty close to a good number of stores so returning stuff doesn’t usually mean going far out of my way.
Analysis paralysis, I love it!
For Father’s Day we took my hero to this ice cream place we had been looking forward to trying. All I had ever heard about it was that they made their own ice cream. I almost regretted going there when I discovered that, not only did we have to choose between all these wonderful flavors I’d never heard of, it was also one of those places that custom mixes the chunks in for you.
Thankfully I was able to make a choice and we really enjoyed it. Unfortunately it will probably be so long before we go again that it’ll be like starting all over again!