Automate the small stuff
Page 100. Automate the small stuff. Decision making is tiring for your brains delivery system, whether the steaks are big or small. Without realizing it, you can fit her away a fair portion of your mental mental energy and the days minor choices.
— from Fuel (Energy)
In the book
Refuel the physical tank first, because it carries the others. Move your body — exercise is the fastest way to alter a depleted state and sharpen the mind; when the gauge spikes into panic, take four or five long, slow belly breaths, which calm the whole system at the source; and never undervalue sleep and food, the plainest refuelers there are. Spend the mental tank on purpose. Attention is the single most essential mental resource you have — it decides what you even notice, and your brain processes everything at a real cost, so automate the small, repeated decisions to save the fuel for the ones that matter. In most choices the goal is not the perfect answer but a good-enough one — spend only the energy the decision truly warrants — and let well-built habits run themselves, since a little useful mindlessness frees the mind's scarce fuel for what truly needs it. — Fuel (Energy)
As Patton said, a good plan violently executed now beats a perfect plan next week; sometimes you simply must be bold and move before you can be sure. And protect your decision-making energy — the brain tires from choosing whether the stakes are large or small, so automate the small daily decisions and spend your freshest judgment on what actually matters. Here is where decisions go wrong, and you should know each failure by name. […] Decide, then act now. A good plan executed today beats a perfect plan next week; act without hesitating. Protect your focus and forethought. Automate the small choices, spend your energy in your circle of influence, and choose with forethought, judgment, and values. Use simple sorting labels. Run incoming demands through quick buckets — critical, necessary, desirable, out — so the trivial never crowds out the vital; and weigh a choice partly by whether it helps you avoid future frictions down the road. — Decisions & Choices (Decision/Choice/Focus/Forethought/Consequences)