3474: [Part 1] Decision Automation: 5 Things I Do to Increase Willpower and Make Smart Choices by Tyler Tervooren

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[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_01] This is Optimal Living Daily, Decision Automation, 5 Things I Do to Increase Willpower and Make Smart Choices, Part 1 by Tyler Tervooren of Riscology.co and I'm Justin Malik. Today I have a bit of a longer post, I'll read the first half today and then finish the rest for you tomorrow. So with that let's get right to part one and start optimizing your life.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_01] Decision Automation, 5 Things I Do to Increase Willpower and Make Smart Choices, Part 1 by Tyler Tervooren of Riscology.co. The Gist. When you automate decisions that don't matter, your willpower increases and you get incredibly good at making decisions that actually make a difference. You're sitting at work when the phone rings, you've been waiting for this call.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_01] You don't know what the person on the other side will say, but you know there's a big opportunity on the line, one that could change your life, skyrocket your career, improve your family. But there's also a risk involved. If you say yes, it could go wrong even if the odds are slim. Now a question. What's the best time of day to make this decision? Well, funny question, right? Why would it matter? It's a great opportunity, just a slight risk.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_01] Won't you make the right choice regardless when you're asked? Most research says no. In reality, you're faced with all kinds of decisions daily. What time should I get out of bed? How much should I save for retirement? When should I feed the cat? Do my toes look funny? Should I get married? And so on and so forth. Individually, these questions aren't hard to answer. Even the deeper, more involved ones can be simple to decide.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_01] But together, the sum is greater than the parts. If you ask yourself all these questions at the same time, you'll melt down. It'll be a terrible, draining day. You'd experience, as the experts call it, decision fatigue. Intrigue. The inability to make a smart, rational choice after having to make others before it. But you're a leader, aren't you? You want to be, at least. You have lots of decisions to make each day, and how you decide them will have a big impact,

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_01] not just on your life, but the lives around you. People are counting on you to make good choices. Are you making the best ones possible on the decisions that matter? The bad news is you probably aren't, at least not all the time. But the good news is you can do something about it, and quickly, to fix the problem. By the time you finish listening to this, you'll have already fundamentally improved your ability to make smart decisions about life's biggest choices.

[00:03:13] [SPEAKER_01] How your willpower withers. How do you decide whether someone should spend their life free or locked up in prison? You and I are unlikely to ever need to answer such a delicate question, but parole judges have to answer it many times every day. Someone made a mistake years ago. They've done some time. And now a judge decides if they're fit to be free, or if they should head back to the slammer. The judge will look at many details. What was a crime? How long did they serve?

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_01] How was their behavior? What do the psychological experts think? All these factors are compiled, carefully combed over, and decided upon by someone sworn to uphold the laws of the land. Then they make a tough decision. That is, unless the judge had a busy morning and hasn't had lunch yet, then you can pretty much count on them throwing out the process and sending people back to prison. The safe choice. Even judges, the ultimate arbiters of justice,

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_01] fall victim to decision fatigue. They lack the willpower to do the right thing under the wrong conditions, just like the rest of us. Why? Because willpower is limited. Making good choices requires lots of willpower, and you don't have enough of it to make the right one all day long. For most of us, there's a finite number of decisions we can get right each day. So deciding which ones to make today is critical.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_01] When you consider how bad we are at prioritizing big things in the future, shouldn't I save some money for retirement? And how good we are at over-dramatizing the trivial matters of the day, does this tie go with my suit? It's a wonder we make any good decisions at all. If you have a big vision for the future that requires lots of willpower and focus, how will you succeed when, should I wear a red shirt, gets the same priority in your brain as, how should I launch this new program? Surprise, you won't.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_01] But you can if you're willing to do a little work right now to make good choices easier. If-then decision making, five strategies to automate success. You have a lot of decisions to make each day and not a lot of energy to make them with. Our brains do us no favors helping to rank what's important in the moment. So how do you make sure the important decisions get the bulk of your attention

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01] and you don't drain your willpower to make good choices before they arrive? The simplest answer is to make important decisions in the morning. But it's an imprecise tool. There are all kinds of unimportant decisions you have to make every morning. Like, should I eat breakfast? What color pants should I wear? Should I work out this morning? Before you're ready to make important ones. You don't always know when you'll face a critical decision. If a life-altering opportunity comes your way at 4 p.m.,

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_01] will you be ready to act on it? What if the entire SpongeBob SquarePants DVD collection goes on sale? Will you know what to do? The other downside is it doesn't solve the problem of too many decisions and too little willpower to make them. You can make great decisions on the important things and still feel lousy when you struggle with the others. So, what to do instead? Automate. If this, then that. You can remove the need for willpower for all your unimportant or predictable decisions

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_01] by building systems that look for clues and automatically make the best decision. If this is happening, then this is exactly what I'll do. Poof. No more need to weigh your options. But automating your decisions is a weird thing to think about and kind of hard to conceptualize. What does it look like? How does it work? The easiest way is to look at some examples and try to emulate them. Learn by doing.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01] Here are five examples you can use right now to start automating your decisions every day. Number one, build a morning sequence. When you wake up in the morning, do you know exactly what happens next? Do you always do the same thing or do you wait to see how you feel before getting out of bed? You won't realize it in the moment, but that hesitation to decide just subtracted from your willpower account. Was it worth it?

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01] A few years ago when I realized how much I struggled with mornings and how much that struggle led to poor decisions all day, I built an automation workflow to decide how my days should start. I call it my habit ladder. When I wake up, I know exactly what to do and when to do it. If it's before 6am, then I go back to sleep or read a book. If it's 6am or later and it's a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, then I get up and go for a run.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_01] Almost every decision that can be made before I start work in the morning was decided long ago. No willpower required. That's a good thing because it takes time for my brain to become useful in the morning anyway. All the willpower I saved can be used when something really important comes across my desk later in the day. Number two, hear that in tomorrow's episode.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_01] You just listened to part one of the post titled, Decision Automation, 5 Things I Do to Increase Willpower and Make Smart Choices by Tyler Tavorin of Riskology.co and I'll be right back with my commentary. Thank you to Tyler. Tyler, I really like using reminders on my phone to help with sequences and also in a way sort of help with automating decisions like when I should do something. If I have a reminder set to do something, I'll usually do it sometime shortly after the reminder goes off.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_01] So now I have like, I don't know, probably 20 reminders in my phone on repeat that tell me when I should do something. Otherwise, like you said, it feels like I'm wasting so much mental energy either trying to remember when I'm supposed to do something or forgetting and then messing up a routine or schedule. And setting reminders is so easy. There are plenty of apps you can use on your phone. If you have an iPhone, there's a reminders app built right in there. You can even just tell your phone,

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_01] remind me to do X at whatever time today and it'll create the entry for you just by using your voice. It's very cool. So no excuses. Something to try. Let me know how it goes. But we do have more to this article, which I'll finish in tomorrow's episode. So with that, thank you for being here and listening every day, including the weekends. And I'll be back tomorrow to finish up this post where your optimal life awaits.