You Have About Four Good Decisions a Day. Spend Them Well.
I noticed it first in the inspection business. Reports I wrote in the morning were sharp. Reports I wrote after five were full of softened language and things I’d let slide. Same inspector, same training, same standards. Different time of day.
Then I noticed it everywhere. The evening snacks I’d never eat at breakfast. The purchases made at nine at night. The agreements I’d make at the end of a long meeting just to end the meeting. The quality of my choices followed a curve, and the curve went downhill all day.
What’s going on
Every decision costs something, and the something runs out. Not just big decisions. What to wear, what to eat, which email to answer first, whether to respond to that text now. Each one is a small withdrawal, and by evening the account is empty. When it’s empty, you don’t stop deciding. You just start taking the default, the easy option, whatever’s in front of you.
That’s why the fridge wins at ten p.m. and the gym wins at six a.m. It’s not about discipline. It’s about who’s left to make the call.
Protect the morning
If the first hours have the best decisions in them, don’t waste them on things that don’t need deciding. I stopped checking email before I’d done my most important work. The emails were all decisions, dozens of them, and they were draining the account before I’d bought anything with it.
Put the thing that matters most in the first slot. Not the most urgent. The most important. Those are usually different.
Automate the trivial
Same breakfast most days. Clothes decided the night before. A standing grocery list. A fixed time for bills. None of these are interesting, which is exactly why they shouldn’t cost a decision. Every trivial choice you remove from the day is a small amount of judgement saved for something that deserves it.
People sometimes hear this as a recipe for a boring life. It’s the opposite. Boredom in the small things is what buys you freshness for the big ones.
Never decide tired
This is the rule that’s saved me the most money and the most relationships. Nothing with consequences gets decided after eight at night. Not a purchase, not a reply to an annoying message, not a yes to a new commitment. Write it down, sleep, decide in the morning. The morning version of you has the full account, and he’s much better at this.
Watch for the tell
You’ll know you’re overdrawn when you catch yourself thinking “whatever, fine.” That phrase is the sound of an empty account. When you hear it, stop deciding. Whatever you’re about to agree to can wait until tomorrow, and if it can’t wait, the answer is no.
Today
Count how many decisions you made before you did anything that mattered. Tomorrow, move one important thing to the first slot and one trivial thing onto autopilot. Watch what happens to the quality of your afternoons.
Launch list
Be there on day one.
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The book itself — 40 laws in ten parts, 320 pages, each ending with The Work — is funded first on Kickstarter.