Make better decisions
When was the last time you made a decision? You may not realise it but you’re making decisions all the time. There are the “fully aware big ones” that you may agonise over or talk through with people before picking a path. But almost every hour we’re awake there are micro-decisions and most of the time we’re not even aware we’re making them. Yet the consequences of these micro-decisions are what affects our energy. If you find yourself feeling a little exhausted part way through the working day, it’s quite likely this is down to the micro-decisions you’ve been making.
Understanding and mastering micro-decision points can have a powerful impact on your productivity and energy levels throughout the day.
Computers and machines are great, when they work. Switch them on, tell them what to do and expect, a couple of pointers for what to do when something out of the ordinary happens and they will happily churn away without requesting vacation time, holidays, or even toilet and bathroom breaks.
Us humans, well we’re biological beings. Unlike computers we are not built to go on all day churning away at the same task. Yet we are also built to expect the unexpected, to be endlessly creative, resourceful and recognise points in the road intuitively where decisions make all the difference.
Have you ever had one of those days where you start off believing today is going to be different. You switch on outlook which immediately tells you that some colleagues have been working through the night on things they just have to now tell you about. Before you know it, the day has almost gone by and you’ve done everything on someone else’s to do list and yet you feel like you’ve stood still or even gone backwards. I sense more than a few nodding heads out there.
Decision points surround us. We know about decision points as we’ve all made them at some point – to go to university, which course to study, to leave one job and move to another, to decide on our life partner, to buy our first home. We recognise big decision points partly because almost everyone goes through these periods so they are “overt” decision points, that everyone sees and accepts.
Yet every day we are faced with micro-decision points that are not so visible to other people and often they sail through our subconscious but have a big important bearing on how we shape and bring energy to our days.
Different tasks we aim to tackle create different levels of mental load for us to handle and ramifications for whether we complete them well or not. Meetings we chair demand that we honour the purpose of the meeting but also handle all the complex human interactions. That appraisal we’re about to work on with a key staff member will have a profound effect on their commitment, motivation and willingness to contribute to your goals so whilst it’s possible to sail in and try to wing your way through the meeting, the potential consequences and cost of repairing a broken relationship outweighs the preparation time. Even a quick delve into your inbox requires comprehension, commitment of facts to memory, evaluation and formulation of responses.
The historic response by productivity gurus has been to maximise our utilisation time, make every second count – yet this logic tries to equate us with mechanical beings that we are not. The Centre for Mental Health estimated, stress at work to cost the UK economy £35 billion. [1] That’s right. Billion. Enough to build over 65 new hospitals. A staggering sum of money. It’s a stark reminder that mental muscles can become overloaded and break.
Every runner knows stamina can be built but biomechanics will influence and constrain that growth. This is where productivity advice that attempts to equate us with machine logic is destined to fail and often at great cost. As beings with a heart and a pulse what we need to recognise is that the key to sustaining our energy levels throughout the day is to produce rhythm – using the concept of a pulse to shift up into brain taxing tasks and then down into recovery time. Recognising that we can aim to construct our days in advance to achieve a rhythm of high intensity and lower intensity tasks but also to take advantage of wise choices in micro decisions that happen throughout the day.
Josh Davis[2] describes us humans as being “cognitive misers”. It means we tend to rely on automatic choices and habits when decision points face us. This gets us through the day but reducing our cognitive load in making choices. This is all fine when if we automatically always make wise choices but often our subconscious default setting is geared to the easiest choice of least resistance even if not the wisest.
Automatic default choices happily prevent us from the pain of self-reflection and awareness. We conspire with ourselves to just go with the flow and ignore the micro decision choices that we face that could have a positive bearing on our energy levels throughout the day.
Let’s illustrate. At some point this week you’ll have a meeting that gets cancelled on you or finishes short. This is a change to your day and you are presented with a decision point as to how to use or handle the additional time you’ve been given.
Your default setting might be, I am always behind on my inbox so I will use the spare ten minutes before my next meeting trying to kill some the unread emails. During which you stumble on an email from your boss asking your opinion on a key issue one minute before you walk into your next call. You go into the next meeting persuading your brain to park the “boss issue” and concentrate on matters in the new meeting.
Your conscious decision might be, that was a tricky meeting, things got a bit agitated and though we got to an answer it was a taxing encounter. I have ten minutes before my next meeting where I want to perform at my best, to be energised, emotionally calm and free from what has just happened.
The choice of how to spend those ten minutes is yours. The cognitive miser tendency means we will often not even see the decision point ahead of us but sail straight into a default task without considering its impact on the rest of what is ahead of us.
Want to create an energy boost? Here’s three things to try.
- Before you accept meetings in your diary. Consider grading its load-level – high for something taxing or brand new where you’ll really need to give it your fullest attention and low for meetings that feel more routine or even create positive feelings such as a team get together. Have a notional maximum number of high-load meetings you’ll take in a day and place them apart from each other or at times of the day you know your brain is at its most active
- Build the firebreaks. Particularly if you have help with your diary add time on to the end of high-load meetings and encounters for recovery so you’re not bounced from a frustrating encounter with a supplier into taking that frustration into an appraisal and coaching meeting with one of your most valued team members.
- Create your own new default setting for micro-decision points. We all have meetings that get suddenly cancelled or finish earlier than expected so instead of defaulting to your cognitive miser setting, decide in advance how you’ll break the cycle. For example make a mental commitment if my meeting finishes early I will stand up, walk off, get some water, stretch legs, not touch a computer or screen, do some breathing exercises. Although it might seem like diving into the inbox is the efficient thing to do, your mind will repay the refresh time with greater productivity in your next task.
However you seek to change things, remember the cognitive miser effect means your brain will tend to default to what it has done before in order to save its own energy. New rituals are what creates the habits your brain craves to make life easier for itself.
So do yourself a huge favour. Take a moment to look at the default answers to decisions points that really aren’t helping you and make a statement and a new ritual. Practice it regularly a few times even if that means writing it on a wall in front of you. The key phrase is “when this happens I will do this”. You need the trigger as well as the action. Make this your new ritual and before long ritual becomes a habit and your brain will take the easier and now better route for you.
[1] Mental health at work: The business costs ten years on | Centre for Mental Health
[2] Josh David PHD, Two Awesome Hours
