I automated my decisions for week — and it showed me just how much time I waste
John Loo/Flickr
We make thousands of decisions each day, according to some estimates. Not all of them are equally important.
Deciding what pants to wear and how to support a friend in need require different amounts of attention and mental energy, for example.
There's some research suggesting that making decision after decision can drain your brain, leaving you less capable of handling hard choices as the day goes on.
And though there've been questions recently about how valid that research is, it does make you wonder whether making fewer choices each day could be beneficial.
This got me thinking about whether automation could put me on the path to clearer thinking. So I decided to take it for a one-week test run.
As context, this was not just a professional decision (or, assignment) but a personal one too — I am terrible at making decisions. I say this as someone who literally flipped a coin about where to go to college (and ended up transferring).
For me, decisions often involve agony, hair pulling, sweaty palms — making minor choices throughout the day is totally overwhelming for me, and by the evening, simply choosing what to eat for dinner or listen to on my commute home feels like a Herculean task.
The plan: For one week, I'll make fewer decisions by automating "inconsequential" choices so I (hopefully) have more mental clarity for the important things. I'll tackle food, clothing and media. I'll eat the same taco salad for lunch every day (from by Chloe), wear blue jeans and a black turtleneck a la Steve Jobs and adhere to a media diet — a predetermined list made Sunday night of what I'll listen to, watch and read throughout the week. I know I'll be tempted to cheat on my media diet, so I'll automatically set my phone to go into "do not disturb" mode between 10:30 p.m. and 7 a.m. so social media notifications don't pull me in.
Here's a recap of my days:
Monday, February 13
I am casually emulating Steve Jobs (it was a tight race between dressing as Angela Merkel, Zuckerberg or Jobs — I chose Jobs) in hopes of becoming a "uniform dresser."
It did feel great not having to fret about fashion this morning — I was out the door faster than I'd been before (maybe ever) and not having the choice to try something else on, while limiting at first, was ultimately freeing. I set my alarm for 7:20 a.m., meditated for ten minutes at 8:00 a.m. (this trend didn't last throughout the week, to be clear) and ate my daily breakfast of granola with almond milk. At the end of the day, though, I have to say I don't feel drastically different.
Tuesday, February 14
You know what the most romantic thing in the world is? Dressing like Steve Jobs on Valentine's Day. You're welcome, world (and partner).
On day two, I have not yet tired of my by Chloe salad. I did have to announce in a team meeting that I'm wearing the same outfit everyday, not the exact same items of clothing (I have six black Uniqlo turtlenecks).
My important musings of the day: I haven't felt a remarkable, overwhelming sense of clarity, nor any "lightness" by being lifted from such weighty decisions as choosing clothing and food. I will say, however, it's given me much less time to dawdle (one of my favorite activities) in the mornings. I used to be stressed to get out the door on time, or I'd get distracted by something completely irrelevant like investigating grout on the shower tiles and then scramble to get out the door on time.
Because social media isn't explicitly part of my media diet, I'm not really engaging in it. Yesterday, I felt like I was missing out. And the impulse to scroll through Instagram or pull up Twitter when confronted with a semi-awkward situation where I would have to stand silently next to other humans scrolling Instagram, i.e. riding the elevator or waiting for coffee, is hard to resist. But being unplugged in a world of people staring down at their phones is proving to be liberating and eye-opening — you don't realize how often we default to staring at screens until you're the only person in the room who's not doing it. That said, the media diet is shaping up to be the greatest gift of all. Unplugging is…magnificent. Especially today, because someone, not naming names, has an ex-boyfriend who is prolific with posting pictures of himself and his new girlfriend on Instagram. His magnum opus, I swear.
Wednesday, February 15
I'm still not sick of the salad and feeling pretty damn confident in my blue jeans/turtleneck combo despite being greeted with "Hey Steve!" when I walk into the office. There are worse people to emulate.
As the week continues, I'm realizing that the media diet is really my favorite aspect of my decision fatigue experiment. I find myself using technology less (except for my computer at work, of course). It does feel very strange that I'm deliberately cutting myself off from the digital world though. Fear of missing out is waning for social media but being disconnected from the constant news cycle — while incredibly freeing — is a blissful ignorance that I'm not sure I can entertain for more than a few days. The positive side of this is that I'm relying on my coworkers and friends to keep me in the loop — a novelty these days.
Another plus of my predetermined media diet is the time it's saving me. We can all relate to wanting to watch something, then spending a sitcom's amount of time just looking for the perfect show to sate your palate. Even better, I haven't felt this engaged with a book since college — truly (I chose to read a book of stories by Ted Chiang). The lack of options while commuting (usually I spend at minimum three stops deciding what music or podcast I want to listen to halfheartedly to while I struggle through the NYT crossword) has also made for a more peaceful and screen-free ride.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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