What Decision Fatigue is Really Showing You – MYM Day 12

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Do you know what decision fatigue is telling you?

Decision fatigue.

I struggled with this for so many years but never knew it had an actual name! How freeing it was to read these two words because the weight of too many decisions do exactly that to me – they exhaust me!

I am convinced that I have been given a heart for a large family to teach me so many things about life. With each addition into the family, there is a little bit less room for “self” in the process. This is one of the major lessons that being a mom to many has taught me, but it has also taught me enormous lessons in living a disciplined life.

As our family grows, the need to me more organized, more systematic, and more disciplined also grows. As life gets busier and busier with more mouths to feed, more laundry (and bigger clothes as the kids grow), and more stuff to clutter up the house, I have had to become more creative and more intentional in how I deal with all of these things.

I am generally pretty good at determining where something in our home or in our family life is not working well. How can I tell?

Decision fatigue.

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When something, the same something, overwhelms me on a regular basis, I know that there is a breakdown somewhere. I know that in some way, something needs to change.

Let me give you an example.

Meals.

When feeding a large army like I have, I used to dread meals. I hated thinking about what to make, I hated making sure that we had what I needed to make the meals, and I certainly dreaded the execution.

Dealing with these core issues gave me decision fatigue.

I have a friend, also with a large family, who had been urging me to try meal planning. I thought the idea was quite ridiculous. I already dreaded everything about meals, why on earth would I want to add another step to this already painful process?

But after repeated promptings by my dear friend, I tried it. And then I discovered I hated it. However, I stuck with it, and after about a month, I discovered that overall, I felt like I had more energy every day. I realized that I didn’t feel overwhelmed nearly as often, and I then came to the conclusion that it could only be due to the meal planning.

Meal planning helped eliminate the decision fatigue and overall fatigue that came with having a handful of children who forever wanted to know, “what’s for dinner?!”

Here’s another example.

I do my very best to implement the “one-touch” rule in which things are only to be handled once. My dirty coffee cup should be put into the dishwasher when I finish with it rather than setting it on the counter or table, which would therefore require that one cup to be handled more than one time. When the mail comes in, a decision is made about what to do with it right away since the one-touch rule also applies to the mail…and numerous other things.

What does the one-touch rule eliminate? Decision fatigue. You know, the having to decide what to do with something over an extended period of time…or the having to look at it sitting somewhere for an extended period of time.

When you experience decision fatigue about something, it very likely could mean that you need to attack the source of whatever is causing you the problem. Tired of dealing with kids’ school papers? Implement a solution that heads them off at the pass. Feel as though you’re always drowning in laundry? Create a sensible laundry schedule and stick to it. Are you always feeling tired? Maybe you need to examine your morning or nightly routine, adjust your sleeping schedule, or create more pockets of rest in your day.

This 12 day journey has been such a thoughtful exercise in being intentional, forming new habits, and making lifestyle changes that will be sustainable through the long haul. Where you find stress in your life, it’s most likely a great place to do some problem solving and then to create some attainable goals.

I love how on day 12 of the Make Over Your Mornings course, Crystal encourages us to stay the course while continuing to form new habits. It’s about this time in forming new habits that we start to need a little extra encouragement.
Does this idea interest you? Want to know more? This is the focus of day 12 in Crystal Paine’s course, Make Over Your Mornings. This course may be just what you’ve been looking for. Click on the banner below to find out more about it!

The beauty of this course is that since it is a download, it is a one time purchase that you make and can then use again and again. In this way, you can still join us in the journey while catching up on where we’ve already been at your own leisure!

You still have time to get your mornings streamlined before the busyness of life completely takes over.

For those days when you just feel drained, this book, Unglued: Making Wise Choices in the Midst of Raw Emotions, is a great read. I’ve read it several times, and it is by one of my favorite authors.

Crystal’s book, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode: 9 Simple Strategies to Stress Less, Sleep More, and Restore Your Passion for Life, is also a favorite and speaks very much to getting yourself out of the every day craziness that we can so easily fall into.

Both are among my go-to books for living a life of intention!