Humans are little balls of contradictory fluff.
We know what is good for us, yet we often do the exact opposite.
We know we need to eat healthily, but our willpower buckles at the mere sight of a chocolate éclair. We know we need to exercise regularly, yet we put off going to the Power Pump class because we are too tired. We know we should get our finances in order but that seventh season of Housewives of Minsk is on and we really, really want to find out whether Vladimir and Bianca finally hook up.
Our brains are hard-wired to keep us alive and that’s the reason why we have such a hard time making good decisions every day. Our noggins use a remarkably large amount of energy thinking, making decisions, analysing, cogitating, ruminating and all the other stuff it gets on with during a day. That uses energy – a surprisingly large amount as it turns out! Up to a fifth of all your body’s daily energy reserves in fact!
So when it comes to keeping you alive, your brain wants to save as much energy as it can so that you have enough in reserve to fight that sabre-tooth tiger, run away from marauding tribal warriors or however you choose to spend our Saturday nights. (It’s not my place to judge!)
Knowing that it need to leave some juice in reserve, it spends its day working out how to conserve energy. And one of the ways it does this is to compare two tasks you might do and choose the easier one. That’s why, after a long day at work, your brain thinks: “Hmmm, I could crack on with that report I need to hand to Camilla by Friday, but I could also turn the TV on for a few moments and catch up with the latest news. And that is also why you find yourself at 1am still slumped in front of re-runs of Task Master on Dave, your report neatly sheathed in the back of your laptop case.
Your brain is wired for ease. It helps you make energy saving decisions to keep you alive.
And this explains why it is so hard to make the right choices on a daily basis. We are constantly fighting our own instincts.
But there is a simple solution. (Notice I say simple, not easy)
I call them Domino Decisions.
You know those domino rallies where some poor bugger has spent 156 hours of their life setting up a million dominoes in aesthetically pleasing patterns (usually in the logo of their sponsors) so that we can enjoy the delicious fruits of their labours when they push the first domino down and we watch, mesmerised to see if they made a calculation error and the whole thing grinds to a sudden stop mid-way through the video – (come on! Surely you do that too? No? Just me then?)
Well domino decisions work in exactly the same way.
Let’s take a core area of your life: time.
You never seem to have enough of it. You are constantly struggling to get everything done- the laundry, the washing up, insignificant details like feeding the kids etc. It’s a nightmare.
And that dastardly brain of yours is testing your willpower by asking: “You could strip the wallpaper off the spare room… OR…. You could just give yourself 5 minutes to relax and watch 6 episodes of MASH.” And which takes less energy…?
Every single day. Every hour. You are having to make these decisions. No wonder you can’t keep it up! No matter whether you choose the healthy option in decision 1, there is always decision 2 and 3 and 4 waiting around the corner to trip you up!
It’s exhausting!
So making 1 decision now saves you from making this decision a million times in the future.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
1. Decide to get rid of your T.V.
What you do with your time is crucial to living your best life. No millionaire ever got rich by spending each evening watching ‘Lost’ on T.V. and wondering whether it is actually a clever metaphor for the lives of the viewers!
If you feel you are repeatedly distracted by the pull of the T.V. networks every evening, expunge that distraction from your life. Sell the T.V. Cancel your streaming services. Save money and gain your life back.
Having done this, you will NEVER have to make that decision again. You won’t be lured back by the promise of glittery Saturday night T.V. and you can fill your time more productively with things like reading, learning new skills or talking to people!
If you feel this is a bit drastic and don’t want to go that far, at least remove the batteries from the remote and make a commitment that you cannot have them back until you have done project X or Y.
2. Decide to work on your self-identity
How we see ourselves is often instrumental to how we behave. If we see ourselves as lazy, it is easy to pass this off as your loveable character trait and not to fight the urge to sit in our sweatpants all day, eating multipacks of chocolate bars and shouting at the telly.
However, if we start seeing ourselves as a – healthy, fit, hard-working, dedicated- (delete as applicable) person, we have less time arguing with ourselves over difficult choices. Instead of battling with your inner-sloth about whether to go for a run, we see ourselves as a heathy, fit athlete, and that sort of person goes for a run. No questions asked.
3. Decide to outsource
There are loads of menial duties that arise every day that sap your time and energy. Washing, ironing, cleaning, taxes, gardening, washing the car etc. The list goes on for ever. If you hate doing them, and spending Sunday afternoon mowing the lawn brings you out in mental hives, pay someone else to do it. Get a gardener. A cleaner. Sign up for an ironing service. Outsource as many horrible tasks as you feel you can afford.
This way, instead of usually being bombarded by guilty feeling of…”I really ought to do the washing up as I have no clean crockery or cutlery left and tomorrow morning, I may have to eat my cereal out of the box with a chopstick!”, you can instead, write the next script for your YouTube channel, unencumbered by guilt.
4. Decide to produce more than you consume
We are all consumers. We think we are in control of our lives, but every-so-often, clever media gurus get one over on us. We purchase the latest blue widget because the brown one doesn’t match our décor. That bread maker would make my life so much easier, until I have to clean the dust off it after 6 months of taking space on the worktop. That book, that new phone, that shiny new car, that new Netflix programme, that new, that new, that new.
Shiny bauble syndrome. We spend our money on stuff that doesn’t really enrich our lives. So we end up money poor, time poor and exhausted.
So produce. Be creative. Learn a musical instrument instead of watching T.V. Take up a hobby instead of going down to the pub to get bladdered every other night. Start a business so you create money rather than spend it.
5. Decide to get rid of your car
Another biggie here. But think about it. Saving money on the car initially, the annual MOTs, services, insurance, breakdown cover, petrol, etc. = wealth bonus. Having to walk, cycle or jog regularly = health bonus.
Many productivity gurus/ millionaires, value their time so greatly that they hire a driver so that they can work while they travel. Treat the bus or train as your personal chauffeur.
6. utilise aeroplane mode
Distractions take us out of a state of flow and guilt us into stopping what we feel as important.
Jenny from the gym texts to ask if I want to meet up for a coffee – I feel a tug of obligation to text back immediately.
I need to find a synonym for ‘disastrous’ for the financial report I’m writing and 45 minutes later, I’m watching my 7th video of cats playing the piano on social media. (Some of them are really quite talented – mental note to pitch new T.V. idea)
You phone manufacture, together with social media companies and app creators spend billions of their hard earned lolly on getting you to come back to their creations. Notifications, buzzes, pings, bells and whistles: they all are designed to grab your attention and get you back consuming.
So what’s the answer? Turn off all your notifications, delete all your apps that don’t enhance your life, sign out of all social media accounts and stop consuming.
Or, slightly less drastic, put your phone on aeroplane mode and only take it off for half an hour to check your emails, texts and other accounts. Oh, and yes, you can still watch musical cat videos if you want!
7. Decide to plan meals and write a healthy shopping list
Having grotty food in the house is a temptation. I buy a doughnut (usually in packs of 4) and I eat one. A little treat as a reward for a hard day’s work. But doughnuts have voices. They yell at me. They scream so loudly that I can hear them from upstairs. They are the modern equivalent of the sirens from Greek myths, luting unwary sailors on to rocks.
So if I don’t want to be tempted by them, I can’t buy them. I mustn’t bring them in the house. Then they can’t tempt me. They can’t seductively seduce me in their sultry, husky voices “You know you want me, big boy!” (‘Big’ here being the operative adjective for my expanding waistline.)
How do I resist the temptation to buy them? I write a list that doesn’t include them. Then I can, with a clear conscience, walk past those seductive little holey buggers, with a carefree, ”Not today bitches! You did not make it onto the fabled ‘Shopping List of Good Health’ this time.”
8. Decide to set up systems to reach your goals
The Next Few Steps blog is all about starting from zero and getting to hero. It’s not called the One Next Step for a reason. You don’t do one thing then stop and give up and you don’t get rich (financially or in any other way) unless you keep on progressing.
Employing systems to help this process is an excellent way to move you from standing start to flying finish without you spending exorbitant amounts of energy motivating yourself, keeping going and swimming against the flow.
If you want to dig deeper into this subject then click this link to take you to my blog post __________________
But essentially, it is all about building procedures into your routines that allow you to make progress towards a specified goal without continually needing to make those tough decisions every single time, ones that could derail your moving forward.
This simple example is well-publicised. Steve Jobs was no slouch. He has used his time and energy wisely and not only was he fairly rich, he made a massive difference to the lives of millions. Now, look at almost any photo of the man and you will notice he wears the same clothes in each and every one. (I assume that they are not actually the same garments that he had washed and dried every night- see section 2, Outsourcing). He took the decision making process out of his morning routine by wearing the same clothes, leaving his mental capacity free to spend on things like becoming a multi-bazillionaire. (It also had the added advantage of allowing him to maintain continuity in his work – any photo/video that was taken of him could be added to ones from months ago because he looked pretty much exactly the same.)
Conclusion
And there you go. If you struggle with making the same decisions day in/day out, being constantly tempted by the easy way out, and feel this is negatively impacting on your life, make a domino decision. Make one decision to remove all future decisions, excluding that trauma from your life once and for all. Pushing down that one decision domino, radiates like ripples in a pond out to lots of other areas of your life, freeing you up for bigger and better things.
As always, make your Next Few Steps, count.
Homework:
What one idea form this post could you implement into your life? Where can you apply one domino decision to know down all other decisions stretching way into your future? Either make that decision now or schedule some time to work on it.
What are some of your own domino decision hacks? Share them with us below!