729：Conserving Mental Energy

Conserving Mental Energy By Steve Pavlina In a Vanity Fair profile piece from 2012, writer Michael Lewis shared some of President Obama’s productivity habits. One of those habits involved routinizing mundane daily decisions. Since Obama has to make many difficult high-level decisions each day, he doesn’t want to waste his mental energy on smaller decisions. So he puts the mundane choices on autopilot. For instance, the article states that Obama only wears blue and gray suits. He keeps his wardrobe choices simple, so he doesn’t bleed off mental energy fussing over what to wear. Obama follows the same structured daily routine when he’s in the White House: Get up at 7am, go to the gym and exercise for 45 minutes, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, glance through the newspapers, review the daily security briefing, and then head to the Oval Office. In the evenings his family goes to bed around 10pm, but he stays up till 1am working solo, including preparing for the next day. Much of his actual work involves making decisions. The easy decisions are made by others, so the ones that reach him are usually the tough ones; they’re the types of decisions that don’t have obvious correct answers. Such decisions require careful thought and often involve difficult trade-offs and significant risk. Making these decisions is a key responsibility. To conserve his mental energy for thoughtfully considering options and making decisions, Obama does his best to avoid wasting this energy on low-impact decisions like what to eat or what to wear. He either lets other people make those simpler decisions for them, or he makes those decisions once and puts them on autopilot, so he doesn’t have to think about them repeatedly. How much mental energy do you squander on low-priority decisions each day? Could you make those decisions once and put them on autopilot? … https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2014/02/conserving-mental-energy/