I’ve known about Spoon Theory for years.
If you’re not familiar with it, the basic idea is that you start the day with a limited number of “spoons”, with different activities using up those spoons as you go. It was originally created by Christine Miserandino to explain what living with a chronic illness can feel like.
I’ve always understood it. I could see why it resonated with so many people. But it never really fitted my life.
Until I stopped thinking about spoons as energy.
For me, decisions take spoons. 🥄
Some Decisions Obviously Take a Spoon
There are decisions where you expect to need mental capacity.
Speaking to the school about a problem. Writing your business plan and deciding where you want the business to go. Preparing for a job interview and thinking about what you want to say.
Those decisions require thought. You know they do. You probably make some space for them.
But those aren’t necessarily the decisions I’m most interested in.
It’s all the tiny ones.
- What am I going to wear today?
- What am I going to have for breakfast?
- What do I need to do first?
- Should I reply to that now?
- Which of these three things is actually the priority?
- Do I need to deal with this today?
- What should we have for dinner?
On its own, “What am I wearing today?” doesn’t feel like it should cost a spoon.
Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it’s just a grain of sugar.
But keep adding grains of sugar to a teaspoon and eventually you’ve got a heaped spoonful.
That’s how I think about decision fatigue. It’s cumulative.
The Invisible Decisions Are Often the Interesting Ones
The big decisions announce themselves. The little ones don’t.
You can make dozens of tiny decisions without really registering that you’re making them. But every one still requires you to stop, consider some options and choose. And there can be hundreds of them.
For me, that’s where the spoons start disappearing.
It’s also why I think these smaller decisions are worth paying attention to.
They’re almost invisible, but they can also be some of the easiest decisions to do something about.
Mental Load and Decisions Aren’t Quite the Same Thing
There’s a relationship between mental load and decision-making, but I don’t think they’re the same thing.
Mental load is all the stuff you’re carrying. Things you need to remember. Things you’re keeping an eye on. Things that might need doing. Things you need to ask someone about. Things that haven’t quite been resolved yet.
And then, within all of that, there are decisions.
They’re sitting in your inbox. They’re on your desk. They’re in your head. Someone asks you a question. You remember something you haven’t done. A notification appears. Something changes and a decision you thought you’d already made needs making again.
A busy life creates more of both. Running a business can create more of both. And neurodiversity can add another layer to the way we experience, process and manage all of it.
Sometimes, by the time an important decision comes along, I’ve already spent far too many of my decision spoons on things that really didn’t deserve them.
So I Try to Protect Them 🛡️
I’ve become much more conscious about reducing the number of unnecessary decisions I ask myself to make.
Not because I’m incapable of making them. Because I’d rather keep that thinking capacity for the decisions that actually need it.
And the smaller, repetitive decisions are often a good place to start:
- Can I pre-empt this decision?
- Can I avoid needing to make it?
- Can I make several of these decisions at once?
- Can I make the decision once and then stop making it every day?
One of the places I particularly try to do this is in the morning.
Routines Can Turn Decisions Into Habits
Think about how many decisions can happen between waking up and starting work.
What time am I getting up? What am I wearing? What am I having for breakfast? What do I need to take with me? What am I doing first?
Individually, they’re grains of sugar. But you can remove quite a few of them before the day has really begun.
That’s one of the reasons I like routines.
A routine means I’ve already made some of those decisions. And when something becomes a genuine habit, it goes a step further. I don’t need to consciously decide to do it at all. I just do it.
That’s a decision spoon I get to keep. 🥄
Tools Can Hold Decisions for You Too
The same applies to tools and systems.
- A calendar can hold a decision I’ve already made about when something will happen.
- A task list can stop me having to decide repeatedly what I need to remember.
- A template can remove the need to decide how to start something I’ve done many times before.
- A checklist can hold the thinking for a process so I don’t have to recreate it every time.
And sometimes I can batch decisions.
Rather than deciding something five separate times during the week, I can sit down once, make five decisions and move on.
But timing matters too. ⏰
If I’m going to batch decisions, I want to do it at a time of day when my decision energy is relatively high. Doing it at the end of the day, when I’ve already decided the heck out of everything, isn’t when I can bring my A game to the party.
None of these things is particularly revolutionary.
That’s rather the point.
The aim isn’t to build an elaborate system for managing every part of life. It’s to notice the decisions that keep taking little bits of capacity and ask whether I actually need to keep making them.
Not Every Decision Should Be Removed
I don’t want to automate my entire life. And I certainly don’t want a system making decisions for me simply because it can.
Some decisions deserve thought. Some need judgement. Some need me to stop and consider what I actually want.
The aim isn’t to avoid making decisions.
It’s to stop wasting decision spoons on decisions that don’t need them.
If a routine, tool, system or bit of planning can take care of something predictable, that’s one less decision competing for my attention.
And that leaves a little more capacity for the decisions that actually matter.
Where Are Your Decision Spoons Going? 🥄
You might not think of yourself as someone who struggles with decisions.
That’s partly the point.
It’s easy to notice the big ones. It’s much harder to notice all those grains of sugar.
So if you regularly reach a point where a relatively simple decision suddenly feels much harder than it should, it might be worth looking at what came before it.
Not just the big decisions. The tiny ones too.
How many decisions have you already made today?
And, perhaps more importantly:
How many of them did you really need to make?