Less Deciding, More Happiness: The Skill of the Century

If you've spent more than 5 minutes alone with me, and we were wearing clothing, then you probably know that I love quotes - particularly quotes that say big ideas in few words. I have quote apps on my phone. I rattle quotes off to my family over the phone. I collect lists of quotes and post them on Facebook or write them on my inner thigh in sharpie. So when I heard Graham Hill say "Editing is the skill of the century," I immediately locked myself in my laboratory for days, refusing food and water, and sleeping only 30 minutes a night.

"Editing is the skill of the century." It's like a bodybuilder's bulk and cut cycle, with the 20th century being a hundred year long bulk. Now that the 21st is here, it's time to cut out what's useless and only keep the best parts of life. Hill's focus is on stuff. "Less stuff, more happiness," he says. While cutting useless stuff out of your life is a worthy goal, a whole lot of people, most of whom are much smarter and more eloquent than I, have written more than I'll ever have time to read on the subject of having less stuff (maybe someone should edit an essential "less stuff" collection that I would have time for). In light of that, I decided to focus on another area our skill of the century can help us - decision making.

Decision fatigue is a well documented phenomenon. There's even a Wikipedia article about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue). Essentially, the more decisions you make, the worse your decision making ability becomes. It can be assumed that taken to an extreme, if you were forced to do nothing but make decisions all day, by the time you go to bed, you might have so little decision energy left that you decide to wear a suit of armor instead of pajamas. In order to help you avoid this, I've put together a few ways I've found to help edit my decision making down.

Pick a Brand 

When you have tuna on your list, do you buy it in a can or a pouch? In water or oil? Dolphin safe, or with bits of REAL dolphin? I personally get Starkist canned chunk light in water, but maybe you only like solid white. Either way, you should pick what you want one time, and from then on you won't have to make that decision. Do the same thing for mayonnaise, bread, lube, whatever. That way, you can save valuable decision making energy for the things that really matter, like hours of smartphone internet research while standing in the coffee aisle of your local high end grocery store, trying to narrow down your top 5 whole bean medium roast arabica blends.

The reviews said that there were distinct
blueberry notes. This just tastes like coffee!

Pick a Uniform

I'm not here to tell you how to dress. This isn't a fashion blog. But if you get out of bed in the morning and you have to decide what pants you're going to wear, what shirt you're going to wear, what belt you're going to wear, and what you're going to do with your hair, by the time you get to your socks you'll be so exhausted you might do something stupid, like wear thin little dress socks with your manly steel-toed work boots.

I'm fortunate enough to have a job where I have a uniform. 6 out of 7 days, I don't decide what I wear. I wear black work pants, a black button up shirt with my company's logo, and my non-slip black leather boots. On day 7, I trade the shirt in for a t-shirt, or a black button up WITHOUT my company's logo.

Now, I'm not saying you should dress as boring as I do. Different social situations call for different levels on the casual-formal sliding scale, and weather calls for different levels of warmth. But have a few outfits that you can just put on without having to decide what goes with which. Meeting with the leader of the free world today? Go with the suit. Lunch with a friend? The casual outfit will be fine. Girlfriend coming over? Try a simple black banana hammock and a zip-up leather mask, or nothing at all! But whatever you do, don't waste your life sitting in front of your closet wracking your brain, trying to figure out what you can wear today.

Pick a Routine

Routines are useful for all kinds of things. You can have a morning routine, a bedtime routine, a getting ready for work routine, whatever. Routines exist in a decision-free zone. Once you've made the decision to do the routine, everything within it is scripted. Probably the most pure example is a workout routine. You go out and lift a predetermined weight a predetermined number of times, or you run a predetermined distance. In between bouts of activity, you rest for a predetermined amount of time. Try adding some routines to your life. They don't have to be perfect, or even fully formed. When you wake up, maybe you start your coffee, then take a piss and brush your teeth while it's brewing, and then come back and pour yourself a cup. That's a great start to a morning routine. The more routines you drop in your day, the fewer meaningless decisions you have to make, and the more decision energy you have for the important or unexpected decisions in your life.

This site says I can meet and bang hot singles in my area for free. But will
my porn addiction REALLY allow enough time for sex with a real woman?

Pick and Commit

The recurring theme here is to make a decision once, and then not worry about it after that. That means you have to commit to your decisions. Don't be swayed by the guy on youtube trying to sell you his workout, and don't be seduced by the sexy mermaid on the Chicken of the Sea can. By all means, if what you're doing isn't working, then reopen the issue and make a better decision this time around, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

Until next time, thanks for reading! If you have any other ideas for decision editing, let me know below.