Bk: 0:00

Welcome to the BK Talks business podcast. I'm your host, bk, and I am a female entrepreneur with a passion for international business and entrepreneurship. I've run businesses in the Middle East, where I've lived for the past 10 years, as well as in my home country, botswana. I am so excited to bring you this podcast that celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of women in Africa, the Middle East and everywhere in between. Whether you are already running a business or just considering taking the leap, this podcast is for you. Get ready for some laughs, some insider secrets and some business breakthroughs that just might change the way you think about entrepreneurship. I cannot wait to hear about your entrepreneurial journey. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome back to the podcast.

Bk: 0:55

So I came across a study that was cited in the Wall Street Journal back in 2016. And it talked about how the average American makes about 35,000 decisions in a day. Now, I know what you might be thinking. I know you may or may not be American and you're wondering what this has to do with you, but this was a statistic. That is a basis. That is the basis for our discussion today. I would love to have statistics by region, by country, even specific demographic information, but that number 35,000 decisions a day was astounding to me. The study went on to say that, while these are day-to-day decisions, these are things like what to wear, what to eat, which route to take to work or school, so there's nothing really groundbreaking about these decisions. But while on the surface it seems like they're really simple, what the science is revealing is that the more decisions that we make, simple or not, the more the quality of those decisions deteriorates, and not only that, but we lose our control and our resolve, the more decisions we have to make. In other words, the quality of our decisions decrease, and we have, quote, an impaired ability to make trade-offs. We prefer to take a passive role in the decision-making process, and we are often left to make choices that seem impulsive or irrational.

Bk: 2:55

This is commonly known as decision fatigue, and I'm sure at some point or another you have experienced some kind of decision fatigue and you get to the end of the day and you cannot make any more decisions. You cannot even think of what to make or what to have for dinner. You can't even and this is when it is bad folks you cannot even choose what to watch on Netflix. So this is decision fatigue, and the thing is, the more taxing your work is or your day has been, the more that you have been required to make decisions throughout the day, the more you find yourself, at the end of the day, suffering from decision fatigue. And this kind of makes sense, because if you spend your day walking or running, you will inevitably feel tired. Your muscles, which have been working all day, will start to lose that quick response, that agility, and they get tired right. And if you've ever taken part in any endurance sport, you've experienced muscle fatigue. So it makes sense that the same thing, or something very similar, happens with our minds.

Bk: 4:43

Like I mentioned before, decision fatigue doesn't just impair our ability to make decisions, but it also affects the quality of our decision making and our willpower. And you can see that on the days that you come home after a long day of making good choice after good choice, we then start to make some not so good choices and eventually make bad choices. You know, it's interesting to me that back when we had infomercials, remember those days when, late at night, you would have these made for TV products and infomercials. It wasn't just because that time had cheaper advertising rates, it was also because at that time of day when our minds are tired, our willpower is really weak, we are most prone to make impulse purchases and, if you really go back and think about it, this is also a time when we give up on good and healthy eating intentions. So this is such an interesting concept to think about when we look at our lives as business owners and we look at the decisions that we have to make throughout the day. So one thing this has really kind of shed light on is that decisions are best made earlier in the day.

Bk: 6:25

The later on I leave them, the less likely I am going to make a quality decision, because, as I'm going throughout my day and making decisions, that quality and that clear decision-making process in my head becomes weaker and weaker. And similarly, if this happens to us, this must happen to our team members, our co-workers, the managers that we work with or even the loved ones around us. So, for example, asking a team member for a recent sales report to be finished right before you sign off on Friday afternoon may not be the best time for this, because the chances of you getting significant, thoughtful or even a useful response that you can base your next month's projections on might not work out so well compared to if you ask this information first thing on Monday morning. You get the person fresh, just rested off the weekend, so the outputs will be very, very different. So that is lesson number one, right?

Bk: 7:49

Try to avoid important tasks, important decisions, difficult decisions, late in your day, late in your evening, particularly if you're the sort of person who needs to be making decisions all the time. Now it's interesting to me because when I thought of the number of decisions that this article was talking about 35,000 decisions on an average day that seemed insane to me. I tried to think of my own day and see if I could even count half of that number, but I think it doesn't really matter. I think the fact is we make a lot of decisions on a day to day and if I am going to, if I want to keep making good decisions, I need to reduce the number of decisions that I make right. So we need to find a way to reduce the number of decisions that we make on a daily basis. So we're going to go through three ways that we can reduce the number of decisions that we make every day.

Bk: 9:08

Number one build systems, systemize your life, use your habits and routines to your advantage. We may not even realize it, but creating routines and creating habits cuts back on the decisions that we have to make. For instance, this morning, we did not need to decide to brush our teeth. We do not need to decide to get dressed. We might need to decide what to wear, but whether or not to wear something we don't need to decide that. These things are habits and things that we do without even have to think about it. So, more importantly, you do them without having to waste your precious limited decisions right?

Bk: 10:03

So as you go about your day and make decisions particularly if these are decisions that you make on a regular basis, stop and think about it. See if there's a way that you can turn that decision into a habit or a routine. So, instead of spending the first five minutes of your day figuring out what you should wear, create a limited or a capsule wardrobe for yourself. Stay with me here. It sounds a little bit uniformy, but it doesn't have to be weird. It doesn't have to be boring. What this is is finding similar bottoms, pairing them with a couple of mix and match tops, and you rotate through these outfits so that you can eliminate the decision of finding what to wear in the morning. If you have recurring tasks at work, put them in your schedule for certain times of the day so that you build a routine over this and this gets it out of the way, so that you don't have to decide when to tackle that task. Better yet, automate it if you can.

Bk: 11:25

Another great solution to minimizing the decisions that you have to do is to batch them and plan ahead. Let's use food choices, for example. We all eat. We all want to make good, healthy food choices. So we could quite simply eliminate the need to decide on food choices for every day, and we can build a routine and plan ahead by creating a weekly or a monthly meal plan. So start with dinner. Sit down, come up with your dinner ideas for the week, write them down. Post them on the fridge door so that when you go grocery shopping, you pick up everything that you need. That way, you don't have to agonize about what to make for dinner when you get home after a long day at the office or wherever. Then you can think about doing the same thing for breakfast and then for lunch. It is so amazing what happens when you take a minute out of your week, maybe more than a minute. Take an hour out of your week and plan your meals for the day. You can even go as granular as choosing your daily snack for the whole week. If you create a couple of menus, you can rotate through these menus throughout the week and that's it. Now you've eliminated the daily decision of deciding what to eat every day, and this is something that you can adapt with other areas of your life and your work or your business, if you sit down at the beginning of the week and make to-do lists for certain things that you have to get done. What you have done is now you have batched a whole bunch of decisions together and you have made a game plan for either your workday or your work week, and this gets you to already have things set into motion, in place for you to just get going, no need for decisions to be made. So think about other ways that you can incorporate this into your life so that you can cut the decisions that you have to make.

Bk: 13:56

And the third way to eliminate decision making is to delegate cut down choices. One thing that we have to realize is that not every decision has to be made by you. If you're working in a team, if you're even in a family, you have people that you can delegate decisions to. Yes, in the beginning is a little bit of an effort to try to explain what needs to happen, who needs to be involved, what needs to be done. But as you start to delegate, you give these people more responsibility and your decision making tasks will be cut back. So once you hand over that task, you hand over that task plus its decisions, associated decisions. So then these are no longer on your plate.

Bk: 14:53

Another great strategy is just to simply cut out on the number of choices that you give yourself. Cut out on the number of choices that you give yourself. You know I hate going to a restaurant and being given like an extensive menu. It's overwhelming. So I found that the less choices that you are presented with or that you give yourself, the better. Get in the habit of trimming your list of choices and decisions even before you attempt to choose. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense. It's so helpful to limit your choices right from the beginning.

Bk: 15:39

Okay, so let's recap. How do we cut down the decisions in our lives? First, build systems. Use your habits and routines. Make them work for you and not against you. Second thing plan ahead, batch your decision making so that you can go into the day the week decision making so that you can go into the day the week already having made that decision and just being left to execute. And three cut down and delegate. Not every decision is supposed to be made by you and the less choices that you give yourself, the better it will be for you when you have to make that decision. And these tips? They look like small, tiny movements, but I promise you they add up. Not only are things being taken off your plate, but you will see, as time goes on and you get into the rhythm of making less decisions, that the quality of your decisions, the decisions that really matter, will be of a higher quality than had you been deciding on a number of things before, had you been deciding on a number of things before that.

Bk: 17:11

One thing that is great news if you have been suffering from decision fatigue over a long period of time, is that your quality decision-making ability can be replenished, and it can be replenished regularly. So in this last section of our discussion today, we are going to talk about the various ways that we can encourage this replenishment, and when and how we can do it naturally. So, in general, decision-making ability replenishes with rest and relaxation. We are living in probably the busiest times in history. There's a lot of information coming our way. There's a lot of information that we are giving out as business owners, as people, as content creators, as business owners, as people, as content creators. So it's no wonder that decision fatigue is becoming a big issue and being talked about and being studied.

Bk: 18:10

So how can we recover? Well, first thing, sleep. I feel like sleep solves a lot of problems. Sleep solves a lot of problems. Sleep solves a multitude of problems and decision fatigue is one of them. It replenishes our ability to make smart choices. Overnight. You will be clear-headed. You'll be able to make important decisions in the morning. There's a reason why, when you're in a stressed state and you can't make a decision, the advice is to sleep on it. Things really do look different in the morning because you have a clearer head. You're able to tackle this decision with energy, with a rested mind. So use that to your advantage. If you feel like you are too tired at the end of the day to make any more decisions, get some sleep. Don't schedule important meetings in the evening and use your mornings wisely.

Bk: 19:22

The second thing that you can do to replenish your mind and to re-energize your mind is to take a day off. When a good night's sleep is not enough, take the day off, do something fun, do something relaxing, de-stress and, most importantly, make as few decisions as you possibly can, and certainly don't make any important decisions. Once you are rested and you have been refreshed, then you can come back and tackle those decisions. But if it really is that bad and a good night's sleep does not do what you want it to do, you might need a day off. I know taking a day might seem like a lot and not everybody is able to take the day off.

Bk: 20:21

Maybe you can take a break. Take A few hours, take an hour, just take a big break to give your mind a rest. Do something completely unrelated. If you're feeling that decision fatigue is really making things tough and your work is suffering, your business is suffering, then take a break. An hour will not burn the house down, so get outside, get some fresh air, clear your head before you make any more decisions. This won't work as well as a good night's sleep or a whole day off, but it's still something. It's still a break that you can give your mind, to boost your energy, to work on your willpower for you to make the right decision. And if, my friend, none of these work for you, then it's time to take a holiday. It is time to give yourself a few days, even two weeks, and depending on how bad it is, you might even need three weeks to leave your laptop, hide those work apps, get rid of your email, get rid of your Slack, hide them from your home screen. You need serious intervention here.

Bk: 21:56

Okay, you don't just take your body on holiday, take your mind as well. Be fully present and in tune with new surroundings, new experiences, new people. And I don't know about you, but I found that every single time that I have come back from a holiday holiday, a real holiday I think to myself man, I need to do this more often, and guess what I don't, and guess what I don't, I don't. Do it as often as I want to. And so recall back, think back to that moment when you think to yourself I need to do this more often Because, guess what? You are more rested, you come back invigorated, you are more creative, you are more alert, you take in more information, you process that information differently and you make better decisions. So take advantage of that.

Bk: 23:02

If you can take a regular holiday, I especially like taking longer breaks and holidays between quarters because that's when I can look back and kind of evaluate my last quarter and then look forward and plan the next one. And so when I come back from that time of just rest and the relaxation, and just that time of just rest and the relaxation and just I can then look at the next quarter and plan for it and make decisions about the business, about the clients, about the customers, the projects, whatever. It is much, much, much better than had I not gone on holiday. That's it, my friend.

Bk: 23:50

I hope you found this episode helpful and it gave you some actionable ideas on how to really really get into in tune with how you're feeling throughout your day, which affects the decisions that you make. And the decisions that you make as a business owner can make or break your business, and we do not want any breaking of businesses. We want thriving businesses that we can leave as legacies. All right, my friend, thank you for spending some time with me today. I hope you have a wonderful day and week ahead. I'll talk to you next time. Bye, thank you.