🧠Reclaim Your Mental Energy: Streamlining Life's Daily Decisions

We have previously explored how decision-making exhausts our brains. We make 35,000 decisions daily, and research shows an inverse relationship between decision quantity and quality. We discussed setting crystal-clear goals and separating planning from execution. This week, we'll extend this concept to examine how life maintenance consumes those precious 35,000 decisions.

Modern life is exponentially more complex than our ancestors experienced. Daily considerations multiply: When should I train? Which route to work? Lunch with Dave? Steam or fry the vegetables? What's that celebrity up to now?

Many of us spend our days maintaining life rather than building it. Today that changes.

Three categories of life maintenance consistently drain the most time and mental energy: food, exercise, and household upkeep. Let's tackle each systematically.

Food 🥘

USDA research shows Americans spend significant time on food preparation and cleanup daily. Cornell University found we make over 200 food-related decisions each day. Important caveat: if cooking brings you joy (it's autotelic), ignore these suggestions. My wife loves unwinding with podcasts while preparing elaborate meals—reducing this time would diminish her wellbeing.

Meal Delivery Services 📦

Do this now:

1. 🔍 Search "[your dietary requirements] meal delivery services [your area]" using your preferred search engine.
2. 📋 Prioritise fully or mostly prepared options requiring minimal input.
3. ⭐ Compare reviews, costs, and variety.
4. ✅ Sign up for the top-rated service.
5. 📅 Trial for 30 days, then move to your second choice if unsatisfied.

This eliminates decisions about meals, shopping, and cleanup while providing nutritionally balanced, convenient options. You'll save hours weekly and can cancel anytime.

For premium options, consider a personal chef. They're typically 40% more expensive than home cooking but only 20% more than delivery services, offering customised nutrition and meal variety.

Batch Cooking 🍳

If delivery isn't feasible or appealing, batch cooking is your solution.

Dedicate one Sunday fortnight to marathon cooking sessions focusing on freezable meals. Plan once, shop once, cook multiple meals. This concentrates decisions and effort rather than eliminating them entirely.

All food solutions scale to your needs and remain cancellable. The value of outsourcing cannot be overstated.

Exercise 💪

Exercise logistics consume disproportionate time compared to actual training. Here are four streamlining strategies:

1. ⏰ Standardise when - Schedule recurring calendar events (e.g., 8-9am workout days) and stick to them.
2. 🚶Minimise commute - Choose gyms within walking distance of home/work, or create a home gym (prioritise home-based to maintain consistency regardless of work changes).
3. 🎒 Standardise preparation - Pre-pack bags with water bottles, resistance bands, access cards. Prepare workout clothes the night before.
4. 📋 Standardise workouts - Perform identical exercises, reps, and weights for extended periods. Add details to calendar events. Update periodically based on goals, using decision autopilot to eliminate thinking. Better yet - Use a PT.

Household Upkeep 🏠

Western households average over four hours weekly on maintenance. Apply the same outsource-or-batch approach:

1. 🧽 Professional cleaning - Research local cleaners with strong reviews. Implement trial periods.
2. 👕 Laundry services - Find pickup/delivery services or laundromats offering wash, dry, and fold options.
3. 📅 Batch scheduling - Group remaining tasks when outsourcing isn't feasible.
4. 🌲Yard Work - If you have a yard and don't find gardening to be autotelic, here is another great area to outsource the job to someone whose better equipped to do it in a shorter time.

Household admin correlates directly with possessions owned. Everything occupies mental real estate and daily time. Consider a "possession purge"—schedule a day this month to sort one room into keep/discard piles. Sell, donate, or recycle appropriately. Feel the mental weight you didn't know you carried lift.

The amount of life admin relating to your household is directly proportional to the volume of 'stuff' you own. All of this stuff takes up real estate in your mind and time in your day. If you haven't already, please read Essentialism by Greg McKeown. Therefore, a great way to reduce the overall upkeep required is to perform a 'possession purge'.

The Payoff 🎯

Streamlining these areas could reclaim up to 3.5 hours daily: up to 2 hours (food), 1 hour (exercise logistics), and 30 minutes (household maintenance). More importantly, reducing decisions improves the quality of remaining choices!

When uncertain, err toward minimalism. You'll likely discover greater satisfaction, and can always reintroduce elements as needed.

Now imagine applying this mindset to finances, commuting, errands, and property maintenance! ⚡

Happy streamlining!