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How Automating My Useless Decisions Helps Me Focus on What Matters
I want to spend my precious energy reaching my goals, not deciding which toothbrush to buy
I used to spend a major chunk of my morning trying to figure out what I was going to eat for lunch. At one point, I became obsessed with choosing a new dish from a different restaurant every day of the week, reading multiple menus and scrolling through pages of reviews. My life was filled with useless decisions like this — I’d sit there in limbo trying to decide what to wear to the day’s meeting, or how to greet a certain person in an email, or whether it’s worth spending an extra $4 on a towel rack that received 4.6 stars on Amazon rather than 4.3 stars. I thought this was just what it was like to be an adult.
What I didn’t understand was that we all have a daily energy reserve, and spending it on the superfluous leaves our minds with less space for the things that matter.
In his book Essentialism, leadership and business strategist Greg McKeown writes that if we can recognize what is essential and eliminate everything that’s not, we can operate at our “highest point of contribution.” Tim Ferriss is someone who lives by this principle. On his podcast and blog, he has explained how he’s automated as much as his decision-making as…
