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Month: August 2024

Digital Habits to Reduce Decision Fatigue

Are you up to your eyeballs in decisions to make these days? School, schedule, work, extra-curriculars, ministry, travel, family affairs, housing, health…the list goes on doesn’t it?

Chances are, many of you are navigating decisions that have to be made not just in terms of multiple categories, but for multiple people in your lives. All of this can lead to decision fatigue, because, let’s face it, we only have so much capacity for decision making each day.

Recently I started to write a blog post about decision fatigue as a wrap-up for my summer series, when I realized that over the years I’d written 3 blog posts on the topic. Typically these posts and emails experience higher readership than almost every other topic, except for when I write about the Cotswolds.

Why does decision fatigue garner such interest? To be honest, I don’t have a great answer, except that at no other time in history have we been inundated with so many queries requiring a response, decision, purchase, plans. I believe many of us are becoming weary as a result.

From emails to activity-specific apps, texts to social media platforms, we are at everyone’s beck and call, available to make decisions or respond to a need at any time of the day or night. Even up until very recently, the only way we could be summoned or interrupted instantly was via a landline.

We have access to endless search options for just about everything from travel itineraries to grocery items. Clothes shopping, hiring a plumber, or registering kids for activities were far more limited and simplified processes prior to our digital era.

Today’s digital constructs offer up information, requests, and options in tireless fashion, ever eroding our rest. As I witness my rest being upset by the endless barrage of information and communication, I’m learning to set better boundaries with regards to how I handle the overload and reduce the decision fatigue that it invites.

Below are 3 digital/device habits I’ve begun implementing over the past year in order to reduce decision fatigue:

  1. My phone (and Will’s) stay in the kitchen for night. I don’t need the temptation of the internet, texts, photos, etc., if I wake in the night and am struggling to sleep. It’s not natural or timeless, and as my desire grows to implement more slow living strategies, those habits that don’t have a history are less likely to make the cut when it comes to my daily rhythms.
  2. I (mostly) avoid checking my email, texts, or other message-related apps first thing in the morning. The same goes for online shopping or searching. My plans, my prayers, and my practices (working out, journaling, making tea etc.) need to come before the rest of the world is allowed to make their requests known or their products and services offered. I’m also trying to do less checking of my device in the evening and make ‘business hours’ a thing. If it’s not social/relationship-oriented, it probably doesn’t need to take up space in my head between dinner and breakfast.
  3. With bigger decisions or requests I’m trying to spend more time thinking and praying about them instead of making decisions sooner than I ought. The decision or answer might wind up being the same in the end, but the habit of not responding, scheduling, or purchasing so soon is better for my nervous system and leaves me more calm and confident in my timing, responses, and choices.

Feel free to save or repin the image above for easy reference in the future.

Ultimately, I feel like I’m reclaiming my brain through these slower, more intentional processes. Through boundaries that limit my access and exposure to the digital world and my devices, I’m giving myself the gift of rest. This helps to reduce decision fatigue, not because the decisions go away (they don’t), but because I’m able to make better decisions with more clarity when I address them at more appropriate times.

Is decision fatigue something you struggle with? I would love to know what aspect of this issue is a weak spot for you, as well as what has helped you manage decision fatigue. Feel free to write me at: hello@bringinginspiraitonhome.com or message me on Instagram @bringinginspirationhome

If you’re up for letting me share in a future newsletter, just let me know and I’m happy to either make your contribution anonymous or provide a first name. Click HERE to subscribe to my weekly newsletter for more slow living strategies, travel tips, and inspiration to help you tap into your creativity and experience deeper rest.

In the meantime, here are a few blog posts I’ve written over the past years that have helped me to reduce decision fatigue. I hope you enjoy them and pass along anything you find helpful to those who find themselves wanting the same thing: how to minimize the overwhelm and enjoy more abundant rest.

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Designing a Schedule that Revolves Around Rest

It might seem counterintuitive to dive into the topic of rest at the beginning of a busy season, but I believe there’s no better time for a refresher on rest than on the cusp of what could be chaos if not managed with intent and care.

For many years, I put rest on the back burner. It was what I ‘earned’ after putting in enough effort. I viewed rest as indulgent when life was clipping along at a steady pace and necessary when burnout hit. But only more recently have I begun to view rest with more reverence. Perhaps this is as a result of entering my 40’s and realizing with renewed perspective that time and health are both precious and precarious. I’ve become so much more aware of how rest is key to sustaining and stewarding the health, relationships, and time I’ve been granted. Rest is where I need to begin, not where I wind up.

Maybe you’re curious as to what that means and how that looks in real life. That’s something I’ve been attempting to define and navigate over the past couple of years. One thing I keep returning to is this intuitive sense that I need to put rest at the forefront of my scheduling, which has required a mindset shift.

When considering the season ahead, I now consider how much rest I/our family will require and plan our schedule accordingly, instead of fitting rest in amidst the busy days and weeks. I have begun thinking of my weekend as a time of rest that fuels my creative work of parenting, homeschooling, and running a business throughout the week, rather than aiming for the weekend in order to recover. Each day’s schedule begins with planning times of rest throughout my day before I insert all the to-do’s. I’m realizing that time spent ‘being’ is just as (if not more) critical to success as my time spent ‘doing’.

If flipping the script of earning our rest is intriguing to you, here are a few things you can do to integrate a more ‘slow living’ approach with rest as the core rather than the afterthought in your schedule.

  • Plan for one weekend a month and one day a week to be open-ended, leaving margin in your calendar. Just seeing or knowing that there is space for rest can reduce anxiety regarding exhaustion.
  • Begin each day with something that inspires and fuels you. Journaling, working out, sitting quietly with a Bible or book and cup of tea. Plan for a short break in the afternoon that will fuel the second half of your day – perhaps a walk after lunch, a catnap, or a podcast while puttering in the garden or folding laundry.
  • Consider which activities or stimuli in your day/week/month leave you feeling exhausted. Maybe it’s driving in rush hour, a cluttered home, or getting kids out the door for school/practice/activities. Tackling these things following a period of restorative rest leaves me feeling much less drained and far more engaged than when I just fly from one busy/noisy environment to the next.
  • Before saying ‘yes’ to a new commitment, decide what you’ll extract from your schedule so that you’re not sacrificing your margin.
  • Read up on the value of rest. Here are a couple books that have inspired me over the last while: “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less” by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang and “The Sleep Revolution” by Arianna Huffington.

Be sure to Pin the image above to a Slow Living Strategies board for quick and easy reference.

Drawn to the concept of slowing down, experiencing deeper rest, and tapping into your creativity? Subscribe to my newsletter for Slow Living Strategies that help inspire a more creative, abundant life both at home and on the road.

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5 Ways to Increase Rest & Decrease Stress

As we prepare to launch into another school year, I’ve been thinking about what I what want this year to look like. It includes the following:

  • Increased time in nature
  • Less screen time & device dependence
  • A schedule that is oriented around restorative rest
  • More automation in order to reduce decision fatigue
  • Improved sleep quality

I’ve recently addressed the first two issues in my regular newsletter, which you can read here (nature edition) and here (screen time edition) but am diving into the other topics on my blog, as this is where I intend to spend more time exploring the concepts of rest and creativity that fuel and restore me whether I’m at home or on the road.

I am passionate about going out into the world (whether that be to far-flung locales or to just-around-the-corner antique stores and markets) and bringing inspiration back home. The cycle of going out into the world and being inspired, then weaving that inspiration into my rhythms and routines helps to ignite my creativity, which in turn enables me to thrive in various seasons and spaces.

If this appeals to you, I invite you to explore this space and stay tuned. You can also subscribe to my weekly newsletter which will keep you updated with my latest offerings (retreats, travel tips, slow rhythm strategies, and favourite finds) and links to fresh blog posts and photo collections.

I’ll be sharing very shortly about my thoughts regarding a schedule oriented around rest and how I intend to apply that to this coming year. One thing that I’ve been considering lately is how I seem to experience the best mental rest once my body has had a chance to slow down. My husband Will, however, told me that he functions best with the opposite approach.

Which works best for you? Slowing your body down first and letting your mental burdens lighten as a result, or letting go of your mental stressors in order to let your body rest? Feel free to share your personal preferences in the comments below or send me an email at: hello@bringinginspirationhome.com  I’d love to chat further about why some of us slow down better one way and others require the opposite strategy!

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