Hey Reader

There are too many decisions to make in a day.

Between what to wear, what to eat, what order to tackle your task list in, whether I should get a perm (forever curious about this one 👀), and everything else, it all gets to be a lot.

You might have heard of decision fatigue, which is the idea that making lots of decisions in a row can leave us mentally exhausted, making it harder to keep making choices.

Decisions show up in all areas of our lives, which is why it can be hardest to make choices (and good ones) in the evening.

One place this has become a problem for me is with the new routine I'm trying to establish of tidying up a space at the end of each day.

I knew I needed to build some flexibility into this habit, so I haven't specified which space I need to tidy. I don't have set spaces for specific days of the week, and to avoid "tidying" a space that actually doesn't need it, I'm not selecting the spaces ahead of time.

While this is helpful in theory, the problem is now I have to make another decision at the end of every day about where my tidying efforts should go.

Funnily enough, by that point in the day, I'm kind of (very) over making decisions. Expecting myself to make another one, and a decent one at that, seems a little silly 😅

Typically, one of two things will happen.

Half of the time I will default to whatever space is right in front of my face, which is usually my desk. My desk doesn't really need tidying every single day though...

The rest of the time, I'll sit there umming and ahhing about where I could possibly put my effort, usually to the detriment of spending my evening doing something leisurely.

Thankfully, the tip we have for this week has been helping me out, and hopefully it'll help you too!

Let's have a look 👀

The idea - Use chance instead of choice

Sometimes there are decisions to be made that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter. They're not so life-changing that they deserve a whole lot of our mental energy.

Funnily enough, these also seem to be the decisions that give me the most grief and suck up the most time 😂 Rude.

Instead of making these decisions myself, I've started offloading them and leaving the choice up to chance.

As someone who loves the idea of gamifying life and turning regular chores, tasks and responsibilities into another way to have fun, this idea really speaks to me.

The most common version of this is flipping a coin.

Rather than getting completely hung up on choosing between two options, I'll assign each option to one side of the coin, flip it, and let fate decide.

Whichever wins the coin toss is the option I'll go with.

Now if that set off your anxiety a little, don't worry! Just because the coin said to go with "option A", doesn't mean you have to.

Often, while the coin is flipping, subconscious-Jess will have an outcome she's secretly hoping for. While I might not have realised before the flip, it's usually pretty obvious when the winner is announced and I feel a little disappointed.

And that's an excellent signal to my brain that the other option is probably the one I want to go with 👌

It's not a perfect method, but it can be helpful for uncovering what you actually want when you've been overthinking things.

But I have more than 2 options...

Not every choice will be between only two options. Sure, we could pair every option up and keep flipping a coin until we have a winner, but by that point we probably could have just made the choice ourselves 😝

While a coin only gives us two sides, dice offer a lot more.

(Recently, I've become a bit of a dice fiend. I have a growing collection of dice, despite not playing D&D nearly enough to justify having all of them 🙃 so at least I can use them for choice-making)

For each of the options you're picking from, just assign each one a number, roll the dice, and see what comes up.

All good if you don't have the perfect number of options for each number. For instance, if I'm using a D20 (20-sided die) but I only have 15 options, then I'll just consider 5, 10, 15, and 20 to be "roll again".

This system can be a great way to gamify a range of decisions though. Some examples include:

• What to add to your meal plan for the week from a list of commonly enjoyed meals
• Which book from your TBR pile to read next
• Which hobby project to work on when you have too many on the go
• Which task to tackle next when your to-do list feels a little overwhelming

I also think it'd be pretty helpful for those evenings when Vogel and I end up spending 20 minutes just figuring out what to watch on Netflix 😂

My tidying problem

The system I'm using to solve my "where to tidy" problem is another great option, that being a spinner wheel.

As cool as it would be to have a big physical wheel that I could write all my different spaces on and spin to find out which one gets my attention, I don't exactly have an ideal place to store one in my home.

Instead, I've been using an online version where you can add as many wheel segments as you want, then click the wheel to give it a spin and see where it lands.

I've added the different spaces that could do with my attention, so when I'm stuck over-analysing where I should tidy, I can let the wheel decide for me.

I don't have to use it every day, but it's a handy tool for those evenings when my brain would rather do anything than make another decision.

A coin toss, dice, and spinning wheel aren't the only options though. Some others include:

• Pick a hand: secretly assign an option to each hand and get someone else to pick left or right
• Lucky dip: write the options on slips of paper, pop them into a container, and draw one without looking
• Random number generator: number your options and let an online random number generator pick one for you
• Pick a card: assign each option to a playing card or suit, shuffle the deck, and draw a card to decide

Whichever you go with, it doesn't have to be super complicated 😊 In fact, the simpler the better given the entire point was for us to reclaim some mental energy!

Let's take action

Think of a low-stakes decision you regularly have to make, but often spend far too much time agonising over.

Rather than trying to make the perfect choice, try leaving it up to chance using one of these methods:

• Flip a coin
• Roll a dice
• Spin a wheel
• Pick a hand
• Lucky dip
• Random number generator
• Pick a card

I'd love to know what decisions you'd be likely to hand off to chance, so hit reply and let me know!

Now though, the wheel says I have to tidy up my office.

To be fair, it's right…it's such a mess in here 😅

Until next time!

- Jess