You Are One Decision Away From a Much More Productive Life

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Abstract

remove the mental load and the struggle of having to make a decision everyday.</p><p id="d472">It is much easier to eat healthy if you only allow healthy food in the house. And it is much easier not to check social media’s latest trending post if you leave your phone in another room or put it on flight mode while you are working. One decision of leaving the phone away will spare you 10s of decisions of not looking at your phone every second minute. One decision of not buying sugary food, will spare you 10s of decisions of not eating it.</p><h2 id="5a1f">Every Small Decision Impacts the Rest of the Day:</h2><p id="80eb">Now imagine this, you wake up and in the kitchen there is a delicious, sugary, mouth-watering breakfast. You start the internal dialogue, on the one hand you know you are going to enjoy the heck out of this breakfast and on the other hand you want to give your liver a break of processing sugar, specially that it was processing alcohol all night long (music emoji). You summon the needed energy and you decide no sugar today (hooray!).</p><p id="a0eb">In the evening, when you are back home and you are faced with another internal dialogue, there is a chance that this (fake) victory you had in the morning will give you a legitimate pass to lose to the instant gratification this time. “c’mon I am not perfect, I already had a win today”.</p><p id="da46">So basically, when you shut the dopamine circuit at the source, you are not only getting the direct advantage of more time, better health, or peace of mind, but also you are saving your energy to face other 10s of open circuits (the visible and invisible ones).</p><p id="1033">Decision making from

Options

this perspective, taking the right decision at the source, have a compound interest like-effect, it accumulates for more productivity and less mental load over the time.</p><h2 id="46ea">Outro:</h2><p id="aa05">You are a couple of decisions away from a much better lifestyle. You just need to cut, at the source, the thing that causes the most waste of your time (or energy). This decision can be selling the TV, or never entering junk food to the house. It is much easier to never watch the TV, than to reduce the time you are watching it. It is much easier to cut junk food than to eat less junk food.</p><p id="5ab7">Of course the drawback of that is the boredom you light get every now and then of not having a TV, or the lack of the dopamine kicks you that make you feel good for few minutes. But this the price you pay. There is no free lunch (specially when it comes to junk food). You pay the price twice.</p><p id="6fc2">On the one hand, you have more free time, more productivity but getting bored every now and then (red pill). On the other hand, you are never bored but you have less time, you are less productive and you carry around a mental load and a feeling of guilt (blue pill).</p><h2 id="c939">About me:</h2><p id="0c4b">Machine Learning Specialist | Writing about productivity | Focused on Software and Process Automation | PhD in Statistics | 📍 Paris | <a href="http://linkedin.com/in/eisultan">linkedin.com/in/eisultan</a></p><h2 id="45e7">Read also:</h2><p id="9a27"><a href="https://eisultan.medium.com/top-8-productivity-apps-on-the-app-store-today-chatgpt-comes-first-3e3370ccaef3">Top 8 Productivity Apps on the App Store Today</a></p></article></body>

You Are One Decision Away From a Much More Productive Life

It is much easier not to watch the TV if you do not have a TV in the house.

Imagine this, you are back at home, afterwork, and you want to have a productive evening, but you end up watching the TV. It is a pattern that you have been repeating for years without an easy way out. It is exhausting, because everyday you go through this process of decision-making that ends up in favor of the TV almost every time. We all have different versions of this pattern, we keep losing to things that kill our productivity: sugary food, watching TV, checking social media, etc.

On daily basis, we have to take 10s of decisions about these small dopamine circuits that we built without paying attention. And with time we develop new circuits that keep increasing the mental load to an overwhelming level. This, no surprise, has a negative effect on our peace of mind and energy.

Solution: Take One Decision Now, Get the Benefit Everyday

For each one of these dopamine circuits, it is much easier to take one decision and cut the circuit at the source than having to shut off the circuit everyday. It is much easier not to watch the TV if you do not have a TV in the house (sell the TV). By doing so, you remove the mental load and the struggle of having to make a decision everyday.

It is much easier to eat healthy if you only allow healthy food in the house. And it is much easier not to check social media’s latest trending post if you leave your phone in another room or put it on flight mode while you are working. One decision of leaving the phone away will spare you 10s of decisions of not looking at your phone every second minute. One decision of not buying sugary food, will spare you 10s of decisions of not eating it.

Every Small Decision Impacts the Rest of the Day:

Now imagine this, you wake up and in the kitchen there is a delicious, sugary, mouth-watering breakfast. You start the internal dialogue, on the one hand you know you are going to enjoy the heck out of this breakfast and on the other hand you want to give your liver a break of processing sugar, specially that it was processing alcohol all night long (music emoji). You summon the needed energy and you decide no sugar today (hooray!).

In the evening, when you are back home and you are faced with another internal dialogue, there is a chance that this (fake) victory you had in the morning will give you a legitimate pass to lose to the instant gratification this time. “c’mon I am not perfect, I already had a win today”.

So basically, when you shut the dopamine circuit at the source, you are not only getting the direct advantage of more time, better health, or peace of mind, but also you are saving your energy to face other 10s of open circuits (the visible and invisible ones).

Decision making from this perspective, taking the right decision at the source, have a compound interest like-effect, it accumulates for more productivity and less mental load over the time.

Outro:

You are a couple of decisions away from a much better lifestyle. You just need to cut, at the source, the thing that causes the most waste of your time (or energy). This decision can be selling the TV, or never entering junk food to the house. It is much easier to never watch the TV, than to reduce the time you are watching it. It is much easier to cut junk food than to eat less junk food.

Of course the drawback of that is the boredom you light get every now and then of not having a TV, or the lack of the dopamine kicks you that make you feel good for few minutes. But this the price you pay. There is no free lunch (specially when it comes to junk food). You pay the price twice.

On the one hand, you have more free time, more productivity but getting bored every now and then (red pill). On the other hand, you are never bored but you have less time, you are less productive and you carry around a mental load and a feeling of guilt (blue pill).