5 Hidden Decision Points that Drain Your Energy

Decisions drain energy.

Imagine if you started each day with a finite number of spoons. Every time you make a decision, you have to “pay” for it by giving up a spoon. How far would you get in your day before you’re out?

Here’s a sobering truth: you might not even make it through the morning.

You might be aware of the big decisions you make each day, but the decisions that drain you the most are often the smaller ones that you may not even realize you’re making.

Here are 5 hidden places where you make little decisions that cause a big drain on your energy.

(1) Your Morning Routine

The biggest game-changer for my energy came 12 years ago, when I successfully gave up my habit of hitting snooze. It wasn’t until I stopped that practice that I realized how many implicit decisions I was making through rounds of snoozing.

Each time you hit the snooze button, you’re rearranging your day’s logistics in the back of your mind. You’re making a decision about whether you can afford the extra nine minutes of sleep; calculating your new wake-up time, and reshuffling your daily schedule.

By the time you get out of bed, you’ve already depleted most of your decision spoons for the day.

Read: 7 Morning Habits That Sabotage Your Day

(2) Your Email Inbox

Every time you open your inbox to scan your email, you begin a process of making dozens of micro decisions.

For each email, you look at the sender and the subject and must decide:

• Is this relevant to me at all?
• Am I interested in reading this at all?
• Do I need to read this?
• Is this necessary to open/read right now?
• If I don’t open it and read it now, when do I want to open it and read it?
• Does this require me to respond?
• Do I have the capacity to respond right now?
• If I don’t have the capacity to respond right now, when can I respond to it?

You may not ask all of these questions on every email. But let’s assume you’re asking just 2 of them for most emails. Multiply that by the number of emails in your inbox. That can easily be a whole day’s worth of spoons.

Read: How to Start Your Day Without Scrolling Your Phone

(3) Meals

If you’ve ever stood at the counter of a salad bar or at your fridge totally paralyzed in indecision to the point where you lost your appetite, then this one isn’t so “hidden.”

Unless you’re eating the same food at every meal or someone is bringing you meals without your input, each meal or snack you consume requires decisions about what to eat and when to eat it. It also sometimes entails decisions about future meals.

That can sound like this: If I eat this now for lunch, what will I eat for dinner, and when will I eat dinner?

(4) Your Work

Whether you’re sitting down to do your work or you’re showing up at the gym for your workout, most of the time you spend “getting started” — or procrastinating on getting started — is really about deciding what to do.

The puttering, the warm-up, the morning pages, the free-writing — all of it is a form of busy work to engage you while you figure it out.

In fact, one reason people check email first thing is to get some direction on what to do. Responding to other people’s needs gives us a motivating push.

It’s easier for most of us to be responsive to others’ demands because it helps us feel like we’re “getting things done.” It also saves us from thinking about the hard things, like our personal goals and what we really want to contribute to the world.

(5) Your Schedule

There are certain things you know you’re going to do every day: brush your teeth, shower, eat, exercise, work, sleep.

Your weekly schedule also has certain constants: laundry, cleaning, meal prep.

If you re-litigate those decisions from scratch each day (or week, depending on the task), add those to your list of hidden decisions.

Every time you bump something from your schedule, you have to decide where to fit it in.

Take Inventory of Your Decision Points

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should help you start to see places where you didn’t realize your’e making decisions.

Spend a few days tallying all the decision points in your routines; you’ll likely discover more.

Then ask yourself how you can minimize these decisions and retain your precious spoons.

Need help getting your spoons back? I help my clients streamline their routines and systems to minimize their decision fatigue and reclaim their energy, time, and capacity to engage in more meaningful pursuits. Get in touch to schedule a conversation.