How to Make Fewer Decisions and Save Mental Energy with ADHD | Executive Function Support
Ever feel like you've made a million decisions before lunchtime? What to wear. What to eat. What to work on first. What's for dinner. And approximately 47 other things that need your attention before the day is over.
When you're an ADHD mom juggling a business, home, and family life, all those little decisions can add up and leave you feeling mentally exhausted. But what if you could make fewer decisions in the first place? I'm sharing three simple, ADHD-friendly strategies to reduce the number of everyday decisions you make so you can conserve your mental energy for more important (or more enjoyable!) things.
What do Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, comedian Josh Johnson, and actor Jason Mantzoukas have in common?
They've all embraced wearing the same outfit (or a variation of it) nearly every day to reduce unnecessary decisions and conserve mental energy for more important or creative things.
And while you might not be ready to commit to a daily uniform, there are plenty of other ways to reduce the number of decisions you're making throughout the day.
That’s why I'm sharing three ADHD-friendly strategies to help you make fewer decisions and save your executive function energy for the things that matter most.
How ADHD Executive Function Affects Decision Making
So why does decision making, even what seems like teeny tiny decisions, tap out our ADHD brain so much?
Let’s think of executive function like a pie. Every time we have to remember something, plan something, or decide something, we are taking away bites of that pie. And for most ADHDers, many of those executive functions will take multiple bites of the pie.
So by the time we’re trying to make decisions about a big project or even what to make for dinner, we’ve already spent a whole lot of effort trying to focus and manage our time.
But as busy, business owning moms, we can’t simply throw our hands in the air and say “Well, I’m spent. I’m done making decisions for today.”
And with the decision heavy holiday season quickly approaching, I thought it might be a good time to share some decision reducing strategies you can incorporate to help you save your effort for the really important decisions you need to make.
Let’s start with eating…
Simplify Your Meals to Reduce Daily Decisions
While eating the same thing over and over, day after day may sound terrible to the average human, for us ADHDers it can make actually eating so much easier.
For one, eating the same thing over and over reduces the decisions we need to make about what we are going to eat. We already have what we’re going to eat or we know where to pick it up.
Along with reduced decision making, eating the same thing can also reduce the friction it takes for us to eat. We just need to grab the thing we know we have and stick it in our mouth.
Ok, there may be a few other steps but you get the idea.
And if you’re thinking, I could never eat the same thing every day, there are other ways you can streamline your decision making when it comes to eating.
You could start small by making lists of meals or foods you enjoy and keeping those on hand.
Maybe you pick four breakfast and four lunch options that you rotate through rather than starting from scratch every day.
Or if you want a little more variety and you have the bandwidth, you can build on that by creating a weekly meal plan. Now you're deciding what to eat once a week instead of every day.
And if that weekly planning starts to feel like another decision-heavy chore, you don't have to abandon the system. You can take it one step further. Create four rotating weekly meal plans using meals you already know your family enjoys. Bonus points if you save the grocery lists to go with them!
Think building on what already works instead of starting over every time.
The overall idea is to make those food decisions less frequently so you can save your mental energy for something else.
Streamline Your Wardrobe to Make Getting Dressed Easier
In 2016, Closetmaid surveyed 1000 American women and found that , on average, each woman had around 103 items of clothing.
Now, I’m a former professional organizer and I can tell you with almost complete certainty that I have more than that. And I feel like I do a pretty good job of paring things down on a regular basis.
So if you’re “average”, it’s likely you have many, many outfit options to sift through on a daily basis. It’s no wonder we struggle with decision fatigue and analysis paralysis.
Seeing as we are still required to be dressed in most civilized parts of our society now, deciding what to wear is a daily non-negotiable.
What is negotiable is how difficult we make it for ourselves. It doesn’t mean you have to go full Steve Jobs in a daily black turtleneck, jeans, and New Balance tennis shoes. Unless, of course, that is exactly what you’d like to do.
What it does mean, however, is that by reducing the number of options, we can make getting dressed easier AND save that decision making power and executive function energy for a different task or project.
And if the daily uniform feels too strict, you could try something like a capsule wardrobe where you have something like 5 bottoms and 5 tops that you can wear interchangeably. Then at the end of the work week, you wash and start over.
Or just like you could pick and plan your meals in advance, you could pick and plan your outfits for the week all at once. That way all you need to do is wake up and figure out which day it is so you know what to wear.
Create Simple Routines to Save Mental Energy
I found a great quote when I was researching this episode…
“Decisions take energy. By creating routines that then turn into habits, we reduce the number of decisions we need to make—and conserve our energy for bigger tasks and decisions.”
When we are able to turn what would be daily choices into automatic actions, our brain can go into a more of an autopilot mode rather than each decision feeling like it starts from scratch, which saves our ADHD brain power.
While it may not feel like doing regular tasks in a different order every day would be taxing, you’re actually making energy-draining, micro-decisions each time you have to ask yourself “what else do I need to do to get out the door?”
Along with decision making energy, you’re tapping into working memory to remember everything you need to do and planning to figure out what all you need to do. No wonder you feel like you need a dopamine boost to get your work day started.
By creating a predictable order of events for your core activities, your brain won’t have to decide the order or what’s next each day…it will already know.
You can enact these simple routines at different times during your day like what to do first thing when you wake up, how to get out the door, how to get into your work day, what to do when you finish your work day, or how to get yourself wound down and ready for bed.
For example, maybe you have a simple routine for starting your workday. You check your calendar, review your priorities, and choose the first task you're going to work on. Same three steps, same order, every day.
Now you're not spending the first 20 minutes of your workday trying to decide what you're supposed to be doing.
Your ONE Move: Make One Decision Once
Here's what I want you to try this week. Think about one decision you find yourself making over and over again.
Maybe it's what to eat for lunch, what to wear, or what you do when you wake up each morning.
Now ask yourself, “Could I make this decision once instead of making it every single day?”
Maybe you create a go-to option, make a plan ahead of time, or build a simple routine.
You don't need to eliminate every decision. Just start with one.
And if you're having trouble deciding where to start, that's exactly the kind of thing I help ADHD mom business owners work through. You can book a free, no-obligation clarity call to talk about your goals, your challenges, and how accountability and executive function coaching could help. Schedule your call by clicking the link below.
