Eliminate Decisions

October 20, 2015

Categories: Decision

If you want to be successful, consider how you might work to eliminate unimportant decisions in your life.

For example, how much time and energy do you spend each morning trying to decide what to wear? Successful people often wear the same thing every day. Steve Jobs always wore a black turtleneck and jeans. Mark Zuckerberg always wears a gray t-shirt. Barack Obama put it this way: You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.

The take-home point is we have a limited amount of decision-making power. You can think of your decision-making power like a bank. It’s a limited resource. Every time you have to weigh your options and make a decision, you make a withdrawal from your ‘decision bank.’ Spend too much time on frivolous decisions like what to wear or what to eat for lunch, and you won’t have enough bandwidth to focus on your really important decisions.

Discussion: How many decisions do you make per day? How could you systematize your life to eliminate unimportant decisions?

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  1. Michelle Smith October 22, 2015 at 12:33 am - Reply

    This reminds me of The Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon uses the roll of dice to make his unimportant decisions in order to free up his brain to consider more complex issues.

  2. Joshua Hook October 27, 2015 at 1:29 pm - Reply

    I need to watch that! How did it work out for him?

  3. […] we can remove some of those decisions from our lives completely, we have a better chance to meet our goals and be the type of person we […]

  4. […] time. Because I was efficient, my shower took 4 minutes instead of the 10 minutes it usually does. I didn’t waste time picking out what clothes to wear. I just chose something and went with it. I didn’t turn on the Today show as I packed my lunch. […]

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