Stop Making Daily Decisions
- What time you wake up
- When to workout
- What to eat
- When you work
- What you’re going to wear
If it’s done daily, it should be decided ONCE!
(This Post is a part of my Rags to Riches series on YouTube. The series is an intimate look at what it takes for me to create life changing income, while navigating my way out of a system that is designed to keep me as I am, where I am, under the poverty line.)
The Trap of Daily Decisions
What on earth do I mean by “Stop making daily decisions”? And how can you just decide once?
Have you ever noticed that the dreaded afternoon slump is SO much worse on days that your morning just didn’t go as planned? That draining feeling isn’t just from being physically tired, it comes more so from mental fatigue.
Having to take more time, to make more decisions daily, leaves much less mental capacity available to put towards the decisions and actions that are required of you through out your day. Then you feel drained, frustrated and unproductive and more likely to order take-out for dinner!
Side note: This is also a major contributor to the failure of our New Years’ Resolutions.
So is Another New Routine The Answer?
Well… maybe. Yah, I know, that’s a terrible answer. But it’s true. Let me walk you through an example.
At the time of publishing this post, we are in the last 8 days of January 2026. And like most other people you’ve probably made a New Years’ Resolution to make a change. Like improve your health, lose some weight, make more money, spend less money, or any other goal that most likely requires a new routine or habit.
The first thing we try to do is work our current lives around said new routine. We buy the “right” groceries, or the “best” planner, or subscribe to the “newest, trendiest” workout app. We do all this before assessing our current lifestyle and capabilities.
Example: Wake up at 5am, drink 2 cups of water, Bathroom, brush your teeth, journal for 10 minutes, workout at home for 30 minutes, shower, skincare, dressed for the day, with a simple hairstyle and light makeup, then a warm nutrient dense breakfast!
With this routine you’ve managed to accomplish a whole morning before 8am! Now you’re set up for a productive day….Right?
Well, maybe.
The questions I have are, how do you usually treat your alarm? What time do you normally get up? Do you snooze the alarm? What’s stopping you from snoozing the alarm now? How about your water? Where’s your cup? Do you even like room temperature water? Can you even drink 2 cups of water, all at once, as soon as you wake up, while holding your bladder?!?!
The questions go on! And they might seem silly or meaningless right now, but on a cold dark January morning, when your brain and body want nothing more than to slip back under the warm covers of your nice soft bed… every question becomes a deterrent from getting up.
Routines made on only good intentions are doomed to fail. But this isn’t only your fault.
You Are Trained To Fail
I say this lovingly, with more than 3 decades of lived experience, we are trained to fail.
From the beliefs and behaviors passed to us from our family, to the education systems curriculums, even the communities we are a part of. All of our lives we are trained to stay as we are, where we are for other people and organizations to benefit from our minds and labors.
No one teaches us how to prepare and plan effectively for implementing meaningful or positive changes to our lives, because if we knew how, we would be less likely to stay in places and relations that no longer serve us.
So instead of living our lives, we are just barely surviving. Caught in a cycle that keep us using more of our limited time, to make more decisions again and again every single day, so that we have no mental strength left to fight our way out of the system, let alone decide what’s for supper.
Build a System of Your Own
The Magic of effective routines is found in the systems that support them.
You decide what clothing you are going to keep in your drawers and closet, that fit well and feel good to you, the rest gets set aside. (I like vacuum seal bags and tote bins for this). Now you have a selection of clothing that works for you and your lifestyle at your fingertips. No more agonizing over what to wear! Decision made once.
Food, grocery shopping, workouts, work, projects, events. Everything should have a system, one that works for you not against you.
Decide what you are going to do, think of the potential obstacles, and put support systems in place to remove the obstacle.
Workouts need to be decided on, equipment needs to be out where you need it, workout cloths need to fit and move with you. If you choose to go to a gym it needs to be easy to get to, have the equipment you need and a safe environment.
Build a system, remove the unnecessary decision making.
Bonus of Building Personal Systems
Most of us stay stuck in life, not because we’re comfortable with our current life, but because we are mentally exhausted.
Once the daily decision making fatigue clears, we have more time and energy to put towards building skills that will get us out of the “survival” mode and mindset.
But building systems for our personal life is actually an essential skill that transfers over in to our professional side of life. We are better able to see patterns in the bottlenecks and backlogs of our jobs and business, then we can build and implement systems to remove the daily decisions and run our work more efficiently.
Just remember, systems are not set in stone, they should be adaptable or replaceable if the system no longer serves the mission.
