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How to Save Your Mental Energy One Decision at a Time
Every choice you make in life requires some mental energy. Minimize the choices, save your energy
The average adult makes about 35,000 decisions (give or take a few) every day, and every one of those decisions uses up a little bit of mental energy. Many of the decisions are made out of habit, which means the energy drain is low. But decisions made on more new and novel things exact a more energy-heavy price.
The more decisions you have to make, the more mental energy you’re going to burn through. This can become a problem when you need the energy to make big decisions or perform at your best, and the energy isn’t there.
My husband and I just returned from a 19-day road trip. While it was a lot of fun, it also required a lot of planning of where we would stay on each of our stops. We needed to think about things like: where did we want to stay? Did we want a hotel or a vintage motor lodge? Where in each town did we want to be: the edge of town or downtown? How much did we want to spend each night?
Every one of these decisions had to be made for every place we booked. It soon became apparent that sorting through all the choices for each night of lodging would take a lot of time and energy. There was no way for me to…
