Decision Fatigue and Schedules

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It’s been a few days since I wrote a journal entry so I thought I should do one tonight. They do tend to help me, sometimes with life in general and sometimes with writing stories. It’s interesting how much writing out things can me process things. I’m sure that goes for a lot of people. All the books, articles, and blogs out there that are dedicated to journalling and encouraging others to journal are proof that there are a lot of people out there using this sort of thing as a tool for themselves in some way. 

 

There are so many things I want to do and so many projects I’d like to make happen. This isn’t anything new, of course. The difficulty sometimes is deciding which projects are really the important ones how much time are going to be dedicated to each. Part of my problem is that indecision (okay… and laziness) get in my way and I end up just playing games and watching TV instead of getting anything done on any of them. Sometimes you really do need to stop and just zone out for a little while. That is totally a valid thing. I do think, though, that we don’t need nearly as much recovery time than we think we do--as a general rule of thumb. Kind of like eating because we’re upset, or whatever, we rest out of not wanting to face something or fail at a goal we have. 

 

I was reading an article about how bad multitasking is for us because of how draining it is in our brains and how it actually means we’re doing more poorly at everything. Our brains, according to said article, can only focus on one thing at a time and so it has to make constant decisions about which thing to focus on--over and over and over again. It talked about something that I think it called “decision exhaustion.” 

 

Wikipedia (I know, but I don’t really want to get into proper research right now, but that’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to follow right now) says “decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making. It is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision making.” 

 

And apparently, we’re using our “decision-making energy” when we attempt multitasking. Which actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think about in the evenings when I think I want to write and I want to have something on in the background, and I end up spending close to an hour trying to pick something because I just can’t seem to. 

 

Other articles I’ve read mention how “willpower” is a very limited resource for anyone and that if you want to really make changes as far as quitting something or making a habit, you need to set your environment up in such a way as to support the said decision. Don’t just rely on willpower for getting out of bed in the morning, arrange your alarm clock and space so that you have to get out of bed to turn off the alarm thereby making it harder to just “hit snooze and roll over before going back to sleep.” 

 

I’ve also read that instead of making to-do lists, though those are helpful, that making a calendar/schedule for yourself is better. If you’ve planned out your time in advance, you don’t have to “find the time” for something during the course of the day. Good intentions are great, but most of the time intentions mean that you spend ten minutes writing when you had told yourself that you’d do thirty minutes just as soon as you finished x, y, and z and had a minute relax. 

I'm thinking that I could benefit from creating a schedule for myself. One that I make, maybe at the beginning of the week each week. Every week is a little bit different with different things happening. I know that surprises will still come up, and exceptions would still have to be made, but I'm usually pretty good at keeping schedules other people make for me (at least in a work or school environment) so making one for myself has potential to increase my overall progress and success in projects. 

Part of me wonders if this is just an excuse I'm using to buy a planner. I do love buying planners. Maybe I'll try some online apps first.