Save Time, Willpower and Brain Cells by Automating Your Decisions

Have you ever looked at a decision you’re facing and asked yourself “do I really want to devote brain cells to this?”

With limited energy and willpower each day, and a million choices to be made, most of us face decision fatigue frequently. So how can we decide what is worth doing, and lower our mental load?

A simple but effective solution is to automate your non-critical decisions, by creating rule-driven habits that enable you to make the decisions without conscious thought.  When you’re talking about decisions, automation can be as simple as a policy that means you know what to do in a situation.

Consider how I get the energy to exercise regularly. My policy is that I try to exercise on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If I’m not feeling great, or the week just isn’t working out, I’ll skip or shift things over by a day. But unless I feel that pull to re-evaluate, I run when it’s the day to run.

These kinds of rules simplify my decision making. Tuesdays are taco nights. Burgers are usually on Friday or Sunday. I stay at the closest Marriott hotel to my client that offers free breakfast. I post a blog every Monday (unless it’s a holiday, then I move it to the next day).

There are many other automation policies I’ve heard of from others. Having a daily uniform, using grocery delivery instead of going in person, or a specific cleaning routine.

The key to making these kinds of policies valuable is to identify the things that are fine to do, but require you to choose when or how to do them. Reducing the number of decisions we have to make in a day reserves more of that mental energy for the important stuff.

What is the important stuff? Well, given the theme of this blog, I would argue what’s most important is when you have a range of possible outcomes and you need to choose among them.

Vanilla or chocolate is inconsequential if you like them both. You just need to pick one. In that case, flipping a coin may be the best approach. Or make a policy that you alternate between them. Automation allows you to save that mental energy and pick a future state without wasting one of your decisions of the day.

On the other hand, if you’ll enjoy one future world more than the other and your policy chooses the wrong option, you’re in trouble. If you have decided to make sure you only buy fair trade chocolate, or some days you like one more than the other, automation could lead to worse outcomes.

To build on this, the reason I automate my running days is because otherwise it’s too easy to skip. When I look at the future world where I’ve made running a habit compared to the one where I haven’t, my outcomes are better. And so, I want to remove every barrier I can (e.g., decision fatigue) from the equation.

The idea that we are picking the future world we’ll end up in, is core to the meta-problem approach. Not every problem needs to be examined thoroughly. But when you feel torn about what choices to make, you can trust your gut and try to see why you feel that way.

I’ll end with some good news: the next version of meta-problem.com is complete. Even if you’ve been reading along for a while, please hop over and take a look at the methods. Between roles spanning parents, managers, citizens, and more along with examples to go with them, I believe this framework can help you solve any dilemma you might face.