This Friday I wrote
Healthy Diet?
a blog post about waking up to ‘reality’ and finding myself standing in the middle of a storm. One could also choose to see those chaotic moments as a bunch of decisions that needs to be taken to ‘continue on with life’. As if it was somehow conveniently paused whenever the shit hits the fan. Those high-level decisions like career choices, where to live, what food to eat a Friday evening – you know the kind! And we intuitively feel how it drains us when trying to reach a tough decision. What may not be as obvious to everybody is the amount of energy – willpower – that all the small easy decisions we take throughout our days take may be equally impactful when we sum them up.
20.000. Yepp, that’s the amount of times you’ve farted publicly. Or was it the amount of decisions? Anyways, I’m not going to fact-check that figure! But I’m quite sure I heard it in a Ted-talk last week and it sounds plausible. And if we accept the idea that it sucks willpower for every decision we make, it would also make sense to eliminate as many ‘wasteful’ decisions as possible.
So that’s why I’m currently on my third week of an elimination diet for cutting out unnecessary decisions from my life. How does that work in practice? Well, firstly I started observing my life and all the decisions I was taking on a regular basis. And I’m still doing that, constantly finding new sources of decision clusters I know see as energy thief’s!
Some decisions you can’t escape – like how to resdesign a fitting at work
I then try to evaluate how much value the outcome of the decision gives me. Like what I’m having in my lunchbox for work is not that important as long as it is nutritious. Hence, I just make something healthy on the Sunday that I can eat throughout the week. One decision being made on Sunday. Saves ton of willpower instead of every day thinking about what to have for lunch the next day, and the putting that in to action. However, It would be naive to think that I can eliminate them all – what’s then left to live for? No, I’m just looking for things that use up my willpower without giving me a proportional amount of value in return.
You see there’s always an alternative cost. If I choose to waste willpower on shitty things in the morning, that means that the likelihood for me doing things that truly adds something later in the day, decreases. And when I put it like that, it’s much easier for me to stay disciplined. But discipline and motivation will eventually always fail, it’s all about designing your life in a way where temptations aren’t as easily accessible. Now I’m going to stop here, because I’ve got some work to do and I’m as a hungry as Ukraine Pitbull that just got a sniff of Putin. Put I’ll share the rest of my thoughts, some tips and the results of my diet so far tomorrow.
I wish YOU a lovely evening, PEACE OUT
Link to the plog bost I wrote on willpower last week:
/Alexander
