Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Willpower & Decision-Making
Recently, it seems that every time I turn on NPR or open the newspaper about the topic is Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney.
What I have heard and read has been so interesting to me, and seems to support a lot of what I have instinctively learned in the last twelve years of helping people control chaos. The main thrust of the book and the research it is based on is that humans suffer from something called “decision fatigue..” Basically, the more decisions people make in a day, the more it depletes their capacity to make decisions and also saps their willpower.
This seems to relate to my work in a few ways. I have often been curious about why my clients who get up at the crack of dawn, get their kids off to school, go to the gym and then to their high-powered jobs seem to lack that same awesome discipline and willpower when it comes to shopping. Now I’m starting to suppose that the shopping comes at the end of the day, when a great deal of willpower and decision-making energy has already been expended. The danger comes when you stop into Gap/Whole Foods/Rite Aid for “one quick thing,” but it’s late and you’re tired and all the things are calling out to you in your depleted state. Then those things come home… Multiply that by a few years and that’s where I come in.
One of my main goals when I am organizing is to make things in your homes and offices automatic, so you don’t have to think about them. Rather than labor over each little piece of paper, I try to teach clients to create a system so that it is less painstaking on a daily basis. If we really talk about what kinds of papers come in and what needs to be kept, then we do the thinking now and put a system in place, so that you can do your filing and bill paying without much decision making. Not only will it is go a lot faster, but you are going to be able to accomplish it at the end of the day after you have already made a lot of decisions and are already tired.
In January 2005 I wrote “AMANDA’S RULES” in a newsletter. The point of a lot of those rules was to eliminate the need to make decisions. We are constantly bombarded with so many choices, especially when it comes to buying things, that it’s a wonder our heads don’t explode in the middle of Fairway. I’ve always found it useful to take certain things off the table: no dry-clean only clothes for work, no juice boxes. Whatever you choose to eliminate up front, whether it is for political (nothing made in China) or health reasons (no PBA plastic), it will help to narrow your choices later. One of the genius things about online shopping is the ability to “narrow your search.” Yes, it is amazing that you can find anything, anytime, online, but what is really great is when you are able to narrow your search for black sneakers down from 884 to 14 in a matter of just a few clicks.
The hopeful part of the research in Baumeister and Tierney’s book is that willpower is a like a muscle, and you can train it, but you can also play smart. My husband and I recently experienced this when we went on the South Beach diet and found ourselves being much more short tempered with our children. For me, it wasn’t so much that I was hungry, but that I was expending a lot of willpower on not putting half & half in my coffee and not eating the children’s left over toast, so I had less restraint when it came to dealing with them. The good news is that it got easier, we got used to what we could and couldn’t eat and didn’t have to use so much energy resisting. Needless to say, the children are glad we got through it.