Ever heard someone say, “If my stomach could talk, it would ask me stop eating sugary/salty/junk food!”
Or something along those lines? We all know junk food is bad for health but it’s difficult to avoid it. The dopamine rush associated with it is one of the primary reasons we are pulled into that cafe selling sugary drinks or that fast food restaurant selling pizzas.
While this blog is not intended to talk about junk food and you already know you are assaulting the internals of your mid-section while consuming it, what you might not know is how some of your activities could be assaulting the internals of the topmost part of your body – the mind!
Tony Robbins is quoted as saying,
“Where focus goes, Energy flows”
Mind helps us focus. Taking decisions is an important function of the mind that requires you to focus. It could be as simple as reading the menu before you place an order. The menu demands your attention and focus and thus the energy. Taking the decision of what to order is actually a teeny-weeny achievement in itself. And that is precisely the problem that we have at hand.
What kind of decisions are you directing your focus on and how much energy are you utilizing while doing so?
Barack Obama famously told Vanity Fair,
“You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
I categorically wanted to pull out this Barack Obama example because it is likely that you are already aware of Steve Jobs’ Black Turtlenecks or Mark Zuckerberg’s Grey T-Shirts.
Now while you might argue that we are nowhere near to the kind of (or the number of) decisions that a President or a company exec is supposed to make every day, I would still urge you to avoid micro decisions so that you can focus and channel your energy to the right stuff. Micro decisions and the teeny-weeny sense of achievement they bring with them is the junk food equivalent for the mind.
I use random.org wherever applicable. I use the LIFO approach on the stack of clothes in my wardrobe as much as possible. I have apps on my phone and computer that automatically change the wallpaper every day. Many a times, I simply order the usual or the first thing on the menu that I think I’d like. Those are some of the examples of how I avoid micro decisions.
In conclusion, remember that micro decisions divert your mind to focus on minutiae and are massive energy suckers. Sure, it’s okay to indulge sometimes be it junk food or micro decisions but remember that ‘done’ is better than ‘perfect’. So focus on the ‘done’ more than the ‘perfect’ when it comes to micro decisions and save some more energy for the actual decisions that matter.
What are some of the daily micro decisions that you can avoid?