Decide Once

This year has been exhausting for so many of us. Certainly there are all the challenges families have faced with virtual schooling, working from home, and the inability for many to connect physically with their support systems. But I think this year has also been incredibly exhausting mentally. This is what I am feeling the most anyways. The decision fatigue, having to make difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible decisions from two not awesome options, processing incredibly significant national and international events, and navigating relational dynamics in an age when literally every conversation or social media post seems fraught with the possibility of conflict. There is conflict and difficult conversations happening around every aspect of our lives—school choices, church reopening plans, job stress, friendship dynamics, potential land mines in conversations with family who think differently on a host of issues. Not to mention an upcoming presidential election and now a Supreme Court vacancy thrown in for good measure. I am tired of thinking. I feel grief at what I see happening around me and on the news, I feel a heaviness at the weight of some of the ways this year will impact all of us, both for good and for not so good in the years to come. I absolutely realize I am speaking from a place of incredible privilege, I cannot even imagine the grief and weight my brothers and sisters from other races and backgrounds are feeling right now. It’s a lot. So in the midst of all this, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we care for ourselves and our own mental health? What choices do we make and put into place to make life feel easier, at least mentally?

Earlier this month I read a book called The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi, the self-proclaimed Lazy Genius. Her podcast is a delightful treasure trove of tips and information on how to be a “genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don’t.” Her basic theme is that we can’t care 100% about everything in life, we can’t be a genius about everything because we only have so much bandwidth. But we can’t be lazy about everything either because then our homes and lives devolve into absolute chaos. Her book is full of principles that she then helps you apply to your own particular set of values (principal number 1 happens to be “name what matters to YOU”). I’ve been a long time follower of hers and found her book so helpful and practical and think about her principles all the time. “What can I do right now to make things easier later in my day?” “What can I ‘batch’ and do all at once to streamline this chore?” And my personal new favorite principle of her’s? Decide Once. Guys this one little idea has made a huge difference in some little areas in my life that have added up to be super helpful in the long run. We are all suffering from decision fatigue. (See above paragraph if you need a reminder…). Even in “precedented times” we are faced with hundreds of decisions a day. What am I going to wear? What are we going to eat? What should we do this weekend? Every single time your kids ask you a question you have to make a decision. “Can I have a show?” leads to a mental process in my mind. “How much tv have they had today? Have they done other things that are good for them first? What’s my energy level? If I say no do I have the bandwidth to handle the redirecting and potential whining and helping with whatever they choose to do instead?” “Can I have a snack?” also leads to a similar process. “How close are we to dinner? What else have they eaten today? Is the dinner I have one I think they will eat? If not maybe a snack isn’t a bad idea.” Y’all it never ends. The mental fatigue is real and it’s really impacting all of us. Kendra’s principle of “decide once” has been a game changer. It’s simply deciding certain things ahead of time to eliminate having to make a decision in the moment. Obviously not everything can be decided upon ahead of time but simple things like set a time when the TV can go on to eliminate kids asking the rest of the day. Or if Monday mornings are awful for you decide ahead of time that every Monday you wear jeans and a black t-shirt. Decision made, zero thinking in the moment required. I mentioned in a post last Friday that we’ve been making homemade pizza every Friday. When I woke up this morning and was laying in bed thinking through the day I thought “well I know what’s for dinner, I know all I have to do is spend 5 minutes before going to pick up the kids mixing the dough and dinner is essentially done.” That kind of deciding ahead of time is absolute freedom for my tired Friday brain. I know folks who have decided “every time I need a teacher gift throughout the year it’s a $15 Target gift card.” Done. They don’t need to scour Pinterest for cute teacher gifts, they’ve made their decisions ahead of time and there is now zero thinking required when it comes to teacher gifts. I know people that have a uniform of sorts—jeans and a solid colored t-shirt with a cardigan in cool months and shorts with a solid colored shirt in the summer. They’ve eliminated all the staring at options trying to put outfits together in those pre-dawn wake up times. I’ve decided once what news sources I check each day and don’t waste time bouncing around the internet. It sounds like a silly thing, but when you start to think about all the decisions and micro-decisions we make in a day, seeing how to eliminate some of them creates a great deal of mental freedom! Obviously not everything can be decided once, but I’ve been looking for places in my life to implement this more and more because it’s made a huge difference in reducing the mental load that we are all constantly carrying.

Which leads me to a super fun project I’ve put together for myself for this next year! This week I turned 39, which means next September I hit the big 4-0. I wanted to find a fun way to mark this year, especially with things like trips and shows being cancelled right and left. When I was in my 20s, every September I used to put together a list of books I’d want to read before the next September and they would always be the number of years old I was turning. So when I was 26 I made a list of 27 books I wanted to read before the next fall when I would turn 27. I loved this challenge, not just of reading the actual books but of curating the list of books I wanted to go through that year. I have gotten away from making a specific list of “this is what I’ll be reading this year” but I’ve decided I wanted to go back to that for my 40th year, but this time with a twist. As I look back at the last couple decades I am blown away by the people who have invested time and energy in me—pastors, teachers, mentors, friends, even folks I don’t know in person but who have mentored me from afar via blogs and podcasts and books. So here’s what I’ve done. I’ve put together a list of 40 books I’m going to read in the next 12 months, but instead of just putting together a list of books I want to read, I’ve hand picked these people in my life and emailed them to ask them to choose a title for me. I’ve asked these mentors of mine to choose some books that have meant the world to them, that have shaped them in their lives somehow and I’ve promised to let myself be challenged, taught and shaped by these works as well this year. Hearing from these amazing people and seeing what titles they’ve chosen for me has been an absolute joy this month. I’ve received titles of novels, theology books, memoirs, and children’s books that have made a huge impact on these people I love. So about 25 of the books I’m reading this year are from these wise folks. The other books I’m reading are books I’ve actually read at some point in my life and loved but have never gone back to. I want to re-read books that meant a lot to me in various seasons of life and see how they land now that I’m approaching a new decade. And of course I’ll be writing and reflecting on all of these choices throughout the year as a way to document what I’ve been learning and how these books have shaped me, both in the past and how they’ve impacted me this year. It’s the decide once principle on a larger scale. I typically read around 60 books a year but I’m drawn to the new—the new releases, the newest titles that are being talked about and never pick up some of the older books that have stood the test of time. So this is the year for that. For titles that will take me longer to get through because they are way more pages than my typical novels I gravitate towards. I’ve spent the past couple days at different used book stores around Jacksonville tracking down copies of these books and pulling re-reads off my shelves and I’m excited to get started.

I’d love to hear from you! What is one thing in your life you have decided once that has made a difference? And if you were to choose a book that has really stayed with you way after reading it, what would it be? Happy Friday my friends, may this weekend be full of cooler temperatures and much joy!