decisions, decisions

whole wheat pasta or veggie?

Do you ever suddenly feel completely overwhelmed and burdened, when somebody asks you to answer a fairly simple question? Or for your opinion on something that, in the long run, really doesn't matter all that much? Do you ever just feel tired at the prospect of choosing what to wear to work in the morning or what vegetable to cook with dinner or whether or not to go out on Friday night?

And then, you just know the asker of the question, or the person who invited you out, or the coworker hoping for some constructive suggestions, is just standing there looking at you and wondering why it's taking you so long to say "yes" or "no", "carrots" or "peas", "red shirt" or "the blue one"?

Lately I have been recognizing this feeling in myself more and more often. Starting first thing in the morning, when I have to decide whether to hit snooze or not, and regardless of the fact that I know it's almost always better not to hit snooze, in the long run... And then I go to work, and the day is one long series of decisions which feel increasingly like life-or-death decisions as the day goes on... And everybody is asking me whether they should send this email reminder, and who they should copy on it; what I think of the colors on this flier or cover photo; which word gets the point across better, or if I can suggest a totally new word that would do the trick; what time they should schedule a meeting with client X.

Don't get me wrong-- I do really like being in a position to answer questions and make decisions. I like that the people around me care what I think about anything. I like managing projects and people and being responsible for the outcomes of things. (And to the girls in my department who I know read the blog, by no means does this post mean you should stop asking for my opinion or anything. All I'm saying is, a girl gets tired.)

Plus, not that I need to pound this nail any deeper, but when I get home I have to decide whether to go to the gym or not (despite my set-in-stone gym routine, I still have this battle almost every day), and then when I inevitably decide to go, I have to decide what to wear to the gym. And then when I get back from there I have to come up with something to eat, and then decide what plate to eat it off of...

I know. I make things hard for myself. I like to keep things fresh and do things differently all the time. And there are about seven billion factors that influence every single one of these decisions, and I always try to take them fairly into account.

I heard this story on NPR awhile back, and it came up again at the writers' breakfast last month. It was an interview with a guy who shadowed President Obama for half a year and wrote a book about it. The bent of the article was on the decisions POTUS has to make throughout the course of a day.

What he said that struck me, the first time I heard it, was "about research that showed the mere act of making a decision, however trivial it was, degraded your ability to make a subsequent decision."

Fascinating. Apparently we each have an allotted amount of decision-making power per day, and if we use it up... that's it!

So Obama, as the President of the United States, has to make a lot of important decisions on a daily basis, I mean the kinds of decisions that impact an entire nation-- the entire world! And because every decision makes it harder for him to make another decision, he gets rid of as many extraneous decisions as possible. He cut out all choice from getting dressed; he now only has grey and blue suits, so he can literally just grab something and go. Somebody else schedules all his appointments and decides what he eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So all his mental capacity can go to running the nation.

This makes me feel a little better. I don't have a staff of people who can make all my minor decisions for me. Or even a board or a cabinet that can help me make the major ones. And when the major decisions have any infinite number of options and outcomes, and impact a good number of people, I think I have some license to waffle.

Just not too long, because then people will stop asking at all. As always, it is a delicate balance.

Seeing as it's Wednesday, the big choice I have to make now is what to do for date night, and exactly how to incorporate food into this plan. Better get on it.

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