#fail book

Okay so I'm not going to keep calling it How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. It is too long and too tedious of a title (sorry, Scott Adams!) Instead, I'm gonna call it the Fail Book. Yeah, I like that name!

Anyway. In today's post I'll write about yet another important lesson imparted by the Fail Book, which seems counter intuitive at first but turns out to be extremely powerful. In the book, Adams says:

Reduce your daily decisions to routine.

We don't realize it, but we have to make a lot of decisions every day. These not only include the decisions you make as part of your job – during business meetings, brainstorming sessions, and while figuring out the best approach to solve a particularly nasty problem, but also micro-decisions like what to eat and what to wear. In fact, it is these unimportant decisions that take up the majority of your willpower, leaving your ability to make important decisions severely impaired.

Picture this. Assume that you wake up two hours before you leave for office. Let's enumerate the different decisions you need to make before you head out:

Should you shave today?

What to wear to work?

What to eat for breakfast?

Are you packing your lunch?

If yes, what?

Each one of these decisions take up a small amount of your time. Taken together, the actual amount of minutes don't really add up to much. But the real culprit here is the amount of fragmentation it causes in your morning routine. Instead of having a large block of time for yourself, you're left with a number of small pockets of free time tucked in here and there... only because you had to make a number of small decisions for yourself... none of which are going to matter the next day. Or even the next hour!

Now picture this. Assume that you still wake up two hours before you leave for office. But this time, you simply follow your routine instead of taking time to decide what to do next. Instead of making your decisions one at a time, consider setting up a block of time, once, to decide your daily morning routine:

You will shave every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

You will iron your clothes for the coming week every Sunday evening, and hang them in your wardrobe in order.

You will have cereal, a fruit, and a cup of coffee every day for breakfast.

You will pack your lunch only on Tuesdays (sprout salad, PBJ sandwiches) and Thursdays (Pasta, corn and veggie salad).

You will revisit the breakfast and lunch menu on the last Sunday of each month.

There you go. Your morning routine just changed from a haphazard, indecision-infested fracas into an orderly, peaceful habit. Keep following it for six weeks or more and you'll find that you have developed muscle memory for all your morning tasks, and you can do them without thinking.

You can even apply the same principles in your work life.

Distracted by too many emails? Turn off your notifications and make a routine to check email once every two hours

Not getting too much exercise? Make a routine to take a walk at 11 AM and 4 PM every day.

Managing a lot of people? Can't seem to find time to do enough one-on-ones? Make a routine to talk to one member of your team about his / her work issues every day at 10 AM.

Automate everything that can be automated, and you will find your productivity levels rise substantially. Also, by doing the same thing at the same time every day, not only will you get better at them, you will manage to find more time than ever to pursue your hobbies and interests.