What is ONE thing you can do today that will make TOMORROW easier?

Jul 19, 2021

Each of us has approximately 60,000 thoughts a day. About 5% are made by our conscious brains. 95% are made by our unconscious brains.

As if that weren't depressing enough for those of us who like to think we are in control of things, including ourselves, our brains can only handle making a certain number of decisions a day.

And that number of decisions is disappointingly low. We can only process a certain amount of information, and handle a certain amount of cognitive load.

Some food for thought:

You probably already know that using willpower to try to get yourself to do things (eat the way you want to, exercise, clean your house, make those phone calls) doesn't work very well.

Willpower is useful only for short-term things, like helping you establish a new habit. It isn't helpful for sticking to something over the long-term.

And willpower wanes over the day. A lot of folks get up and have a healthy breakfast, and maybe even a good lunch too. But then despite their desire to eat healthily (or exercise, or whatever), it falls apart later in the day and they give up and give in.

But did you know that studies show that willpower and the ability to make healthier food choices are further reduced by too much cognitive load?

That is, the more decisions you need to make, the less you are able to resist your fill-in-the-blank kryponite food, especially later in the day. Study subjects given complicated tasks and things to concentrate on made less healthy food decisions. Yikes!

The answer obviously isn't to never think about anything complex again. But it IS helpful to save your brain for the important stuff. Delegate and relegate the easy stuff to your automatic, unconscious, habit brain, AFTER you have set things up for it to follow.

Here's an analogy:

You wouldn't tell your 2-year-old to make a healthy meal. But if you have it set up, your 2-year-old will be willing to eat it. And if you set a 2-year-old's (exercise) clothes out, they will put them on and run around for a while.

And your unconscious brain is kind of like an inner 2-year-old.

You get the idea.

Save your cognitive load for the important stuff, rather than wasting it on trivia.