Episode 26 Transcript

Heather:

Hello, hello and welcome back to episode 26. Got a few questions for you guys today. Does your brain ever hurt? Like seriously, does it feel fuzzy? Do you get those moments in the day and it's like your brain's just not tracking properly. Like you know, you have these little tasks and I mean little, like they don't seem to, they shouldn't be much, right? But it feels like you have to climb this massive mountain to actually accomplish them. Or maybe do you procrastinate on things that normally for you are quite easy to do, or you can kind of get through quite quickly? Do you ever have those moments during your working day where that stuff happens in your mind? You might have what's called decision fatigue. I was exposed to this term, well, I've heard about it for a while, but I was exposed to it not too long actually when listening to another podcast. And it really struck a chord with me because sometimes during busier times of my business, I get that weird feeling in my brain. Like literally, it'll be three o'clock in the afternoon, two o'clock in the afternoon. I'm pretty good with maintaining, you know, I don't have a lot of caffeine. I'm good with my diet. So I know it's not sort of that side of my health, but it's a brain thing. It literally is. I'll be staring at my calendar appointments or things I have to do. And I'm literally like going, that thing seems huge, but it's not. And I can't. compute in my brain like what's going on. So decision fatigue. It's the idea that after making many decisions, your ability to make more and more throughout the day becomes worse. So I wanna give you two popular examples to help you kind of understand how very successful people have tried to limit their decisions. The first one is ex-president Obama. So. He had these like presidential outfits when he was in presidency. And he basically, or at least this is what he claimed to do. So he claimed to have the same colored suit every day, literally to help him limit the decisions that he had to make. Another one, Steve Jobs, Apple, right? He would always wear the black turtleneck, the blue jeans and the New Balance sneakers every single day. Same sort of concept was like, it's one less decision that I have to make. So guys, did you know, and you can Google this, it's everywhere, it's in like medical sites and psychology, all sorts of websites that are out there that are quite esteemed, that, so did you know the average adult makes upward of 35,000 decisions every single day? That is insane. Let me just stress the average adult. It's no wonder that we feel so stressed out. But we are business owners. We probably make a lot more. especially if you have kids, younger kids, you're managing a team, you're managing clients, you might have a family. There's a lot going on in our lovely little brains that we have to worry about, right? So what do you do if it feels like it's becoming harder and harder to make decisions on even the most simplistic of things that you have to do every single day, especially in the busier times of your life? So here's some tips. Hopefully they help. So if you're literally going, yeah, oh my God, Heather, I totally get you. Yeah, these little to-do's in my diary or my calendar are like becoming crazy big mountains I have to climb. So here's some ideas. Number one, you wanna limit yourself to making no more than a few like big decisions, like three or four, just three or four a day, that's it. Only a few big decisions every single day. So here's what I do. I start moving things around in my calendar. So I mentioned this in one of the previous episodes about my at ease philosophy. And a big part of that is time blocking and utilizing my calendar. So I, every day, if I'm looking at my calendar and I realize, okay, I had to, you know, something, some fire came into my business for the day or some urgent thing for a client came in or a team member. And now suddenly that has become a big decision for me, then I'll move a big decision. that I had later in the day to another day. Hopefully that makes sense. I literally will start moving things around in my calendar if I know I'm not going to make a good decision because I've already used my brain power on a few big things for that day. Because have you ever noticed you guys if you have a big decision to make and you're literally like, you're already maxed out and it'll take you three hours to go through something which should take you 20 minutes. That's what I mean by that. Don't stretch yourselves out. Move those decisions ahead in your calendar. I make my change the next day in the morning and I'll just shuffle things around. And then I leave the lighter decisions for later in the day. So number one is limit yourself to no more than like about three big decisions you have to make every day. Number two is plan your agenda a day in advance. That's another helpful tip. So every night I literally on the couch, I will shuffle my calendar for the next day. If I realize I had to move things around from today into tomorrow, I'll make sure that I don't. overpower myself with too many heavy things that I have to do the next day. So that's important too. Then I also know what I have to do the next day. It's like a really cool relief for my brain. Like at the end of the day, I'm like, Oh, now I know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I don't have to stress. I don't have to worry. I know exactly when I have to be up or, you know, what calls I have on as well. So it's like, it just clears out a lot of that space. Number three is take regular breaks in your day. Really, really important you guys. So you want to replenish your brain. I'm getting better at scheduling breaks. I still struggle busier times in my, in my workflow and whatever's going on in my business and my life. But some breaks that I do. So right now as I am recording this, it is winter, middle of winter in Sydney and Sydney is beautiful. And yes, it's kind of like a similar weather to San Diego or say LA in the States, but it can get pretty chilly. And the houses here are not set up. like we don't have internal heating, they get cold. So I bought myself this like very, I call it like the posh beanbag chair. It's this very fancy beanbag chair. It's really cool. It has like this canvas sort of fabric. And actually if you sit on it, it has like a backdrop that kind of pops out when you sit in a certain way. So I bought that and we unfortunately only get sun in one area of our house during the winter. Bad architects, bad architecture. But basically I bought it for this little sun room that sort of attached onto our kitchen. I will literally go grab a cup of tea and sit in that beanbag in the sun. Like I start to plan these little moments of time to just clear my brain and get away from the computer. You know I do that. I have I'll go out on the deck if it's a relatively decent day. Again I might grab a cup of tea for that, grab a piece of toast, whatever it is that I feel like eating or just taking a moment. So that's huge. So having these little moments of time to replenish your brain are very, very important. So you want to make sure to have those arranged timely and adequate meals. That's another tip as well. You want to keep yourself fueled and you want to have good hydration. So I always have, I'm like, I'm looking down to my right. If you're watching my video, I have a cup of tea next to me and a cup of water. So I always have that. Sometimes I do protein shakes. Like I'm always thinking, you know, what I want to do to improve just my overall wellbeing. I've just started on Lion's Mane. Have you guys ever taken that? It's a supplement, mushroom supplement. No kidding. Now this is not probably what happens to everybody, but it is so cool. I'm not even on like the highest dose. I am remembering things back to my childhood. I am blown away by. Like I will have a trigger in the day of just something like, oh, that reminds me of this. And then I have this full blown. memory, vivid memory of something I have not thought about probably ever or in years. It's so amazing. It's good, good brain food. So it's called Lion's Mane. I've been taking that. I've just started to explore amino acids. So I'm always looking at sort of supplements and ways to just, you know, good brain food overall. And we know that water is really important part of that. But I am no dietician. I just know that I like to try things and I like to read things and listen to things. So I'm finding these, these little combos work well for me. Now, the other thing too, so outside of arranging for timely and adequate meals is get your team to weigh in. You guys, it's really important. Oftentimes, if we're going through those moments of busyness and we're slipping back into that hustle mentality, we can start to go internal and feel like I just got to get through this. I just got to get through this. Like it's up to me. If it's to be, it's up to me. All that sort of stuff, right? Which I do love that quote, but you start to go into that, like, internal sort of like cycle of stress and craziness. So getting other people to weigh in is really cool because you get a different perspective. And maybe it's not so stressful. Like right now, I was just on Slack with two of my team members, my copywriter and my project manager, and we are doing this really huge website project for an app. And they own my design, my designer, copywriter and project manager. So my designer dropped in the designs, three design variations and like. I could tell my project manager was probably maybe getting a little stressed. Like it's a big project. And what was cool is I'm like, let's start a group chat and we'll bring the copywriter in and cause normally it would just be the project manager and myself kind of quality assuring stuff. But we got the copywriter in and then she's like, no, this is amazing. This looks so good. So suddenly the stress levels that could be there previously have dissipated because we're getting people that have worked with the client in different touch points and. see things from a different perspective. So that's important. Just ask your team, what do you think? That's it, like literally, I started this group chat and I'm like, well, what do you guys think? So that is a really cool thing because then you don't have to feel alone and that's a really great opening question to get them to weigh in on something that maybe is stressing you out and will help you realize it's maybe not, doesn't need to be a stress point. Make choices automatic. That's another thing that will help you with this decision fatigue. So Like that's what we spoke about with Steve Jobs before and Obama, right? Um, for me, a big part of that is meals, meal prep. So what I do is there's something here in Australia called Marley spoon. Um, hello fresh is another one. There are meal delivery services. Like they basically give you recipe cards that you choose every week and all the ingredients pre-measured, and then you just cook. So for me, what I love about it, it's, it's like a meditative experience. Every night I know exactly what's going to be for dinner. I don't have to go to the shop to get the supplies. And I step away from whatever I'm doing. I know I have a good 30 minutes in the kitchen just to breathe, get present, connect, but I don't have to make the decision. I'm like, it's just all there packaged for me to make a beautiful, healthy, beautiful meal. And since I'm pescatarian, which is little bits of fish here and there. I kind of needed somebody to hold my hand on how to eat more vegetarian and more healthy food. And so having something like this is also pretty cool too, because it's teaching me the process. So Marley Spoon's my little thing to make choices automatic for dinner. I'm also thinking, I'm thinking about Steve Jobs thing is like, it's probably why capsule wardrobes are so powerful and so popular. Have you guys heard of those? Those are like where you get, you know, a few, a few colored shirts, a few colored pants and and or skirts if you're a lady or not. And, but literally you have your wardrobe with different bits and pieces and you can mix and match very easily because everything matches together. So this is all about that part of like, help to make those decisions automatic, the ones that you know you're gonna have every single day. So next, we wanna embrace sleep you guys. If you're not sleeping well, What can you do to change that? That is so important. We need to heal our brains overnight and let them go into the REM and all the beautiful sleep cycles. I wear a Fitbit now and I'm always like, I'm always obsessed in the morning and look at my sleep score. I know I'm such a nerd, but I look at my sleep score and I can tell, seriously, if I wake up the next morning, I will know if I have less deep sleep just by how I'm feeling. I will totally know. And then straight away I'm like, yep, there you go. No deep sleep. That's why I don't feel great. So I'm looking at like studying my sleep, my cycles and learning more about that. So maybe you just try and be in bed 10 minutes earlier. Don't bring your devices to bed. By the way, like try and get in bed by 10 o'clock every night. And I'm just thinking of like the 25 year old me, the one that used to party. Like I was pretty full on in my 20s. She would probably be getting sick in her mouth right now if she knew that the older her was going to bed at 10 o'clock at night, but it helps me feel better. So embrace sleep. Avoid questioning your final decision as well. Embrace the selection that you have made and move on. If you made a decision, that's it, you made it, move on. You can make another decision later to fix the problem or change things, recalibrate from there. Um, I tend to make decisions really, really fast and I just move on. I need to clear that space out of my brain. So that's another little point. Avoid questioning your final decision. I think I have one more. Yeah. If you get stuck, this is old school. If you get stuck, draft a simple pros and cons list. If you ever, when you're younger, did you ever like start to date somebody and you weren't a hundred percent sure about them or you're thinking about breaking up the relationship? And you do the pros and cons list. Did you ever do that? I totally did it. Like the pros of staying together and the cons of staying together and whatever has more is the winner. Um, it can't, it's, it's a simple, but effective little strategy, isn't it? So with your work and your business and what you're doing there, if you have something that you just, it keeps coming back in every single day, looping itself back in. then maybe a simple pros and cons list could help you with that. Can't help, right? Can't hurt, I should say, can't hurt. So, and I have done this with some big decisions as well. So there you are, you guys. Maybe this episode helps you to understand perhaps why decisions are hard to make sometimes, especially later in the day, especially during busier times, because there is a thing called decision fatigue. And I am sure that we... anyone listening to this has experienced it or maybe you're right in the middle of it. Um, I experienced it definitely a couple of times a week, for sure. A couple of days out of each week. And then I just remember back to what it is. And then it's a normal thing. And that I have to reshuffle my calendar and do some of these tactics to help me. Um, you know, be passionate, get through the day and have that energy for the people, my family and my life at the end of the day. So think about that. Um, I'll just leave you with this. Just don't be too hard on yourself. Like literally, if you feel like you're literally losing your mind, it's a thing. Don't be too hard on yourself. And just think about your routines. How can you have better routines to support that beautiful brain of yours that is so desperately needed as you go through this business journey? And just remember to not wear busyness as a badge of honor. We are all busy. We are going to get busy, but you're in control of the busyness. Remember that, you are in control. So you are in control of your calendar and your time, and you can move things around, and you can support yourself to go through that journey. All right, you guys, thank you for tuning in. I'll talk to you next time, bye.