How Teachers and Trainers Can Avoid Decision Fatigue

Highlights Introduction

• Making decisions uses considerable mental energy which is limited (00:42 ).
• Decision fatigue is real (00:52).
• Educators make a lot of decisions - some significant - so it is definitely worth looking at ways to minimise the number of small decisions we make daily, to reserve energy for the big ones (01:42).

Small Decisions

• Time for a brain dump (01:58).
• List the small decisions you have to make every day. Examples (02:19):
  • What to eat for lunch/dinner.
  • When to each lunch/dinner.
  • What time to wake up and go to bed.
  • What to do at the gym.
  • What to wear to go to the gym.
  • What to wear to work.

What Can You Automate, Delegate or Eliminate?

• Automate: make automatic, or at least systematised (03:10).
• Delegate: perhaps to a partner, family member, friend or professional service provider (03:31).
• Eliminate: get rid of completely! (03:48)

Automate

• Fully automatic: social media, direct debits, comment bank (05:19).
• Systematised: podcast workflow (Notion template), shopping list (Bring), The Teaching Space Extra (08:00).

Delegate

• Gardening, cleaning and meal planning (Hello Fresh) - I fully acknowledge my privilege in being able to do this (10:33).
• Skill swap with friends or family - just ask! I now have a new podcast interview editor… (12:03).

Eliminate

• To eliminate decisions entirely, form habits (e.g. gym every day etc). Check out habits podcast episode theteachingspace.com/49, as well as James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits (13:34).
• Examples: wake up time (see the sleep episode theteachingspace.com/109), clothing (like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama!) (14:22).
• Community example: Bob’s robot mower and mulcher (16:05).

Postpone?

• Sometimes it is better to postpone (16:45).

Over to You

• What about you? Let’s chat in the community (17:15 ).

Helpful links

• The Teaching Space Community
• Readwise
• 5 Ways Teachers Can Mark Faster and Smarter and 5 More Ways Teachers Can Mark Faster and Smarter (podcast episodes)
• Create Positive Habits That Stick (podcast episode)
• How to Sleep Better An Interview with Daniel White (podcast episode)
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Notion template for podcasters
• Bring app
• The Teaching Space Extra