Restorative Reminders
How to Cope with Decision Fatigue?
- Anugrah
When you google how to dismiss the distress of decision fatigue you will find some great practical tips on how to cope with it. James Clear in his article How Willpower Works: How to Avoid Bad Decisions (link here) sends out some ultra-practical ideas to do so. Yet, I feel that coping with distress of such kind is a work that extends deep down. The one that roots far into our liminal space that adjoins our heart to habits and habits to our spine. The one that just not polishes the outer shell but also seeps into the resounding expanse of our being.
The practical outer life is the handiwork of what is running around inside. Hence, here are my ways to cope with the decision fatigue that engulfed me in the past weeks. Hope it may help you someday in some way:
Don’t:
- Feel guilty for not performing in every breath you take.
- Blame others for your frustrated fatigue.
- Blame yourself. If you are fatigued, dulling yourself is not wrong.
- Don’t medicate yourself by ineffectively scrolling reels, sleeping pills or alcohol.
Do’s:
- Find someone to talk to. Indecisiveness is not a cardinal sin and everyone needs a listening ear.
- Understand that procrastination, numbness, and impulsiveness are normal ways of our body telling us we need to step back.
- Find some time alone. When you are doing nothing. I find my time just right before going to sleep. Staring into the oblivion of the street-lit highway.
- Find time to watch ridiculous silly movies. Let your brain breathe with lots of non-judgemental laughter.
- Keep away the critical observation. Let things be.
- Be grateful for what you have right now. At this very moment.
And lastly, remember that unlike Siri or Alexa, who would be open-eyed 24×7, me and you are tempered with tantrums, and will split like a splinter, bending from our spines yet we will stand again.
you do not have to settle in your doom fatigue. If fatigue was our destiny and mechanical life the only governing factor of our inner and outer world, things like courage, despair, hopelessness and then coming out of it all would not have been the actuality of our lives.
Thank you for your time here, and if you’re feeling “slightly slouchy” this week as I was, remember that “Human beings can apparently endure an amazing amount of misery as long as there is hope…”
“Suddenly, as when the mist dissolves from a mountain top, the landscape would be visible and the way would be clear. It is only necessary to open the doors of our hearts and minds to let the imprisoned demons escape and the beauty of the world take possession.” – Bertrand Russell
Also Read: What is Decision Fatigue?
Newsletter Updates
Sign up for Delights of the Ordinary. Weekly letters send to your inbox as reminder to slow down that intersects life, art, culture and our practical 9-5 job space.
