160 | Dealing with Decision Fatigue & How to Overcome Daily Overwhelm with Emily of The Moms Overcoming Overwhelm Podcast - Intentional Edit

Decision fatigue is contributing to the daily overwhelm and stress. Emily McDermott from Moms Overcoming Overwhelm shares strategies to reduce overwhelm by eliminating clutter and reducing the number of decisions we make each day.

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Connect with Emily at http://www.simplebyemmy.com/ and on her show Moms Overcoming Overwhelm Podcast

Full Episode Transcription (not edited):

Today, we’re joined by a guest. She’s a wife, mother of two energetic boys, and she is a true simplicity seeker. You know, I love all things simplicity. So we are going to have a lot of fun chatting today. Emily is the host of a podcast that is called moms overcoming overwhelm. And on that show, she helps moms declutter their homes, their heads, and their hearts.

She also enjoys writing poetry dancing, and she even eats peanut butter right out of the jar. I’m excited to welcome her to this episode of the intentional edit podcast today. On this episode, we’re going to get into a very important topic to help you with all things, decision fatigue, how clutter affects the decisions that you make every day and what you can do to improve this situation in your own home.

Hey, Emily, I’m happy to have you joining me for the Intentional Edit Podcast today. [00:02:00] Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Lauren. I’m very excited to be. Absolutely. This is going to be really fun. We are so aligned in what we teach and what we try to get across. We are both simplicity enthusiasts and we truly enjoy helping moms simplify really everything in their homes and life.

lot of times that starts with a thorough purge, a ruthless declutter. I like to call it. . Oftentimes as humans, we don’t realize how many decisions we make in a day and it’s, it can be overwhelming. This really brings the burden and the overwhelm to our lives. It ha causes those feelings to come in where we just feel like we don’t know what to do anymore.

And it’s especially common for busy moms in these busy seasons of life. One issue adding to decision fatigue is often overlooked. It is a big one. It’s something you and I talk about all the time and it’s clutter. It’s the clutter that is in our [00:03:00] home is right now. on one of your podcast episodes, you shared a simple question that can really be game changing in the way that as busy people, specifically busy moms, we can reduce some of the overwhelm that comes from decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is something we don’t often talk about, but it is a stressor in our lives every single day. I’d love for you to share a little bit about this with us today, and. . Then we could actually get into how this is helpful. But let’s start with this one idea, like why is decision fatigue so overwhelming?

Yeah, definitely. So the question that I like to ask is what unnecessary decisions can I remove from my life? So we think about our physical space and being able to get rid of clutter and so forth, but we don’t necessarily think about our stuff and our clutter as being. The physical [00:04:00] manifestation of this, the decisions that we have to make, and supposedly we make 35,000 a day.

Although I think for moms, it’s more because we’re not only making decisions for us, we’re also making decisions on behalf of our family. So if we’re able to look at our stuff as when I’m having to make choices between things, the more things that I have, the more choices I have to make. , and then you’re making those decisions.

That’s why at the end of the day when my husband says, can we talk about the taxes? I go, no, don’t bother me. You know, let me just be, because I’ve just been making decisions using that brain power the entire day. And so that’s why decision fatigue is such a problem for us as moms because it’s really impacted so much by our physical space and the decisions we have to make on behalf of ourselves and also our.

Okay. I have to go back to what you said at the beginning. 35,000 questions a day [00:05:00] 35 thousands decisions that you are making. really that number 35,000, like I can’t even fathom that. And studies show we are just constantly in this decision making mind where everything we do, we are making decisions around.

And I know I talk a lot on episodes and I’m. Sure that you are constantly sharing the same information. We want to have good, solid routines that become habits so that we eliminate some of those decisions. When we have good intentional habits, then we just go through the day. It’s how we do things and we eliminate a lot of those decisions.

Another thing you said was, what unnecessary decisions can I remove from my life? , can you take us through like a typical morning or even just a chunk of the morning so we can get an example of when are these decisions happening and what are we really doing? . Yeah. [00:06:00] And a lot of times we don’t even think about it.

Right? And so when you’re realizing that staggering number of 35,000, you’re like, that couldn’t possibly be right. But if you think about when you wake up in the morning, the first decision we’re making, and most people I know are getting their phones right, that are using, having the alarm on there. Do I snooze?

Do I not snooze? Do I get up? If so, am I looking at my phone? Am I scrolling my phone? Am I going to social media? . Then when you’re getting up, let’s say you’re kind of groggy. Okay, I’ll go ahead and take my shower. You get in there and there. Five different shampoos and three different conditioners and two different body washes, and you’re like, Hmm, which one do I wanna use today?

And you come out and you’re picking between your different shades of lipstick and your different shades of eyeshadow, and you go into your closet, there’s. 50 shirts and 30 pairs of pants and 20 pairs of shoes that you’re making decisions about. And then your kid comes in and says, Hey mom, I was really looking for that Spider-Man [00:07:00] T-shirt.

Is it clean? You’re like, I don’t know, . So they’re trying to figure out what they’re wearing and suddenly you’re thrust into the decisions for them. , what are they wearing? What’s for breakfast? What do they even eat anymore because it changes every single day and what snack they want in their lunch.

Because my son will tell me right after I go to Costco and by the industrial size, whatever, that he no longer wants to eat that anymore. So that’s just a very small snippet of the morning, and it’s this barrage of decisions that you have to make. Whereas if you’re able to streamline some of these things beforehand, then you’re able to really conserve that brain power and that energy for what actually really needs your attention.

Some of these more difficult decisions that we’re faced with in a given day. That was maybe the first 20 minutes of your morning or something? Yeah, something, a small chunk of your morning. And it was a great [00:08:00] example of a typical morning. I’m exhausted hearing it, and this is what we live every single day.

This is the, it’s not like you just explained something uncommon. That’s just one little part of the day. So that’s 20 minutes. So when you add that all day long. I can see where those 35,000 decisions really come from. We have so much to do. We have so much to get done, and there are so many distractions.

When we break it down like this, it’s no wonder that moms constantly report that. They feel overwhelmed, they feel exhausted, tired, stressed out, all of those things. And that’s just their overall feeling the majority of the time. , what are some things that you see that commonly contribute to this level of exhaustion and overwhelm that busy moms are feeling on the day-to-day?

Yeah, definitely. So first is just the amount of stuff that we have and the reason that we like to kinda, [00:09:00] talk about the connection between stuff, choices and decisions is that we don’t often think about it that way. We just think, oh, stuff is stuff. , you know, it’s neutral. It’s just kind of there. But if we think about this concept called choice overload, which is that at a certain amount of choice we consider to be good.

Like if we went to a restaurant and it only had one sandwich on the menu, we would be kind of annoyed, right? But then if you go to cheesecake Factory or somewhere where it’s like a, a novel for your menu, it’s really hard to make that choice. So at a certain point, your happiness goes down. when your choices go up and when you have, you know, so many choices, then it’s like, okay, I’m having to make those decisions.

And you sometimes will doubt yourself. You have analysis paralysis, you don’t know what to choose. You have, if you’re buying something, you can have buyer’s remorse. So there’s all of these kind of negative connotations, but it calls starts with the amount of [00:10:00] stuff that we have and when we have too much.

Then that is causing us to have that choice overload. So in as much as we can, when we’re looking at that first part of your day, can we reduce the number of things we have? So we’re reducing those choices, and that’s kind of where we start. So we can start with our clothing. We can start with. I do the same workout routine on that’s free on YouTube every morning, so I don’t have to think about it.

I just come downstairs and I do it. I have generally a similar breakfast every morning, oatmeal, you know, I don’t have to think about it. You might think, oh, maybe that’s boring. And the thing is you don’t have to have the same thing every day for the rest of your life. Maybe it’s just a season. So we’re just thinking, okay, how do we reduce the stuff and the choices in these certain areas for yourself and your family?

So that would be the first place I would start was really just looking with a different perspective at the stuff you have and how that is influencing that [00:11:00] decision fatigue. Pair that down and you’ll find hopefully that that’ll become a lot. I love that. I love what you said the whole concept of choice overload.

So a couple things came to my mind when you were talking about the restaurants. There’s a restaurant not far from me, it’s a little mountain town, and they only have one thing on the menu. You can get a hamburger if you want cheese on it. You can get a cheeseburger and it, I mean, it is a tiny restaurant.

There might be six tables and a little bar area. , it’s always busy. It has limited hours that it’s open and it has been there. I mean, people that are 80 years old talk about going there when they were kids. Same concept and limited kinds of drinks, but you can only order a hamburger or a cheeseburger.

You can pick your toppings and you get chips as a side. They don’t even have french fries. It’s successful. It’s always busy. and you go in, you know what you’re getting. And as you were talking, that place came to mind [00:12:00] because it can be frustrating when you go to a restaurant and they present you the main menu and the specials menu and the drink menu and something else, and they come to take your order and you’re like, I haven’t even looked at half of this.

Like, I’m not even close to looking at half of this. So if you compare it to your day when you remove some of those choices, you make things easier. You, you simplify everything that you’re doing. And then another thing that came to mind when you were talking is some people might say, you know, well, I don’t wanna have the same thing for breakfast every day.

That that is boring. And you, you quickly reminded us. Just because you’re eliminating the choices doesn’t mean you’re making things boring. You’re making things work for your family and you’re simplifying and what works in this season of life. You might be doing something different a year from now, because things change at a rapid pace.

When we’re in the thick of it, it can seem so [00:13:00] overwhelming, but when we truly simplify, when we get rid of some of those choices, it makes things easier. Now I remember. Going to my grandparents’ house when I was growing up and they never had the same thing for breakfast, but they had designated each day of the week a specific thing.

So, and I don’t remember now which day was what, but one day might be oatmeal and berries. The next day is a grapefruit with a side of English muffin. The next day was cereal day. The next day was egg day, whatever it was, and there weren’t really any choices, but when we would go visit, it would be for, you know, a week or 10 days or something.

And every day we were having something different and it was just known what we were having, I never thought of it like this until listening to you explain these things. And that was a way to eliminate decisions really. You’re, you’re helping to reduce that decision fatigue and. The choices when the choices [00:14:00] are not there.

, my big word is intentional. You’ve been intentional with coming up with what works. And so we reduce some of those decisions. So when you give us these examples and explain it like this, Then I already am feeling like, oh, like I, I feel, you know, I feel so much better. So everyone listening, it’s like, you can do this.

You can, you can reduce some of these decisions. The decision fatigue, the choice overload, the clutter. It really can be too much. It can seem like too much. Can you share with us some strategies that you think can help tackle these things and so we can better manage these within our home? . Yeah, definitely.

I think that one of the things you touched on as far as like growing up with your grandparents, we don’t think about how the number of decisions also impacts our children. So you hear sometimes, especially with young kids, that you should only give them like a couple of choices. Like do you [00:15:00]want. apples or bananas with your li you know, and only having a couple choices.

Cuz I had my son when we had changed out his clothing in his drawer. He dresses himself, he’s six and he came out in tears in the morning. He said, mommy, mommy, there’s too many pants. . So I had had like too much in his drawer, you know? So I think one strategy is just kind of recognizing the. that it actually has on our families and especially on our children to have, we think, oh, we want to give them everything.

So we’re gonna give them all of these choices and all these ways that they can spend their time that actually really isn’t helpful for them, you know, in their development. Recognizing that less stuff means less choices. less decisions, which is helpful not only for your health, but kind of regaining that, that energy and also having that brain power for more important things.

That would be kind of my first step, always bringing it back again to the intentionality of why am I doing this? We’re doing it [00:16:00] for ourselves, for our health, for our families. Um, the second is to, Pay attention to where you can remove those unnecessary decisions, and you can kind of look at, okay, what am I doing with my clothing in this season?

What am I doing with what I’m eating, with my workouts, with how I am spending my time? . Um, so those are come good place to start. And then also, I love this idea. Uh, Kendra Dashi, she has the podcast at Lazy Genius, but she talks about deciding once. So again, it’s for a season for a certain amount of time.

I’m going to decide once by wearing. leggings and uh, whatever, button down shirt, , however many days a week or whatever the case may be. For me, I do laundry daily, not because I have to, but because I don’t want to think about it. You know, I’ve decided once about chores. I’ve decided once that on Saturday we’re going to get takeout, and every time you’re [00:17:00] able to do that, , you are again, freeing up that energy and brain power for what actually matters, like the decisions we need to make about our kids’ camps for the summer, you know, or like all of these things that we need to be saving our energy for that and not for these things that really, in the grand scheme of things don’t really matter.

So I hope that that’s helpful. Very helpful. Basically you are setting yourself up to make everything easier when you don’t have to make these decisions, then everything becomes easier, the stress is reduced. The example you gave about your sun with the too many pants in the drawer. I, I mean, I love that because he is showing us what statistics.

Tell us that the more clothes we have, it doesn’t mean that we are wearing more of those clothes. We wear a very small percentage of the clothes in our closet. We use the, a very small percentage of [00:18:00] those things, so when we have more, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we have more outfits and more variety because we don’t use them.

To pack his drawer full, , all these pants, all of a sudden it became too overwhelming. He’s not going to wear 10 pairs of pants. He’s maybe gonna wear three and whatever that number is. And of course there is not one magic solution. Maybe it’s five pairs of pants or six pairs of pants, whatever it is for your lifestyle, for the activities that your family participates in, and finding that balance can be trial and error sometimes, We have to figure out what works.

, I love the idea, eliminate those decisions, as many decisions as you possibly can, and the routines that we have are what can help you eliminate those decisions. Yeah, I think that you speak so much to the intentionality and always going back to what is most important to us, what matters most to us.[00:19:00]

And the only other thing I would say is that we, I have to recognize we’re not making decisions in a vacuum because we have all of this constant opportunity for comparison with what other people are doing and the decisions that they’re making. Where are they going on vacation? What activities do they have their kids in, you know?

What are their kids eating or not eating or whatever the case may be. And so a lot of times, even with online shopping, you know, you go to Amazon and you think, okay, I’m gonna get my son a pair of socks. And then you read reviews and then you get down to this review rabbit hole, and then like an hour later you still haven’t bought the socks because you kept looking at all of these reviews,

And this just kind of makes it hard. To make those decisions and to feel confident in the decisions we’re making when we are constantly having all of this comparison around us. So I think in as much as we can put the blinders on to recognize this is what’s important to me and my [00:20:00] family, and then you have more of that confidence in the decisions that you are making, instead of can, you know, tuning out the no, the noise, so to speak, to make, those decisions a little easier for you.

Absolutely, and just living in this time with constant social media, we are overloaded with so much information. Like visually, we’re always seeing things. I know there’s a couple people that I follow on Instagram or different social media because I. I am interested in something that they’re doing. I’m learning something from them, and I’m very intentional about who I follow and the time that I spend on those apps.

If it’s not something that is bringing me joy or that I am learning from or, or getting information from, then it’s really just wasted time. So I go to specific people I wanted an outfit for something. What would this cute outfit be coming up? , I’m [00:21:00] looking and I knew a couple of the accounts that I follow would have good ideas.

And even with that, it was like, all right, I need a dress for this. And then I, click on the link, go to the next thing, and all of a sudden there’s 10 dresses that come up from this person. And then that other person I follow has, you know, a, a post with 12. And it’s like, I’m back to where I started, so, sometimes that works for me and sometimes it’s like, whoa, this is just too much coming at me.

I spent all this time and I still didn’t make a purchase. Just like the socks, the reviews are, Taking time to get that information and then it’s like, whoa, like I just need to get these socks. Like this is, this should not be an hour or a two hour ordeal. It’s just a package of socks. , yes. We have to remind ourselves of that because we’re always wanting to make the best decision.

You know, with the information that we have. The problem is we’re overloaded on the information, so then it kind of takes forever, [00:22:00] and then we’re wondering why we’re so exhausted. At the end of the day, it’s just the sheer amount of information coming at us that’s impacting those decisions, and that just makes it even harder to make decisions that you feel confident in.

I feel like in this day, and. . I completely agree with you, especially with the social media and the technology piece where if we search for socks, all of a sudden for the next week or two, we are getting all kinds of advertisements and information on socks. And now with my situation, I’m getting flooded with all of these dresses, many that I would never wear, don’t like.

It’s not appealing to me, but it’s like it’s constantly coming at me like, oh yeah, I do need to get a, you know, a dress for this, this event, and constantly there. and constantly adding to that stress. So I want to just kind of reiterate what you said at the beginning, and that question that we can go back to is what unnecessary decisions can I [00:23:00] remove from my life?

Think about that. Think about the 35,000 decisions that you have to make a day, and what are the ones that are unnecessary that we really can remove, we can eliminate, and we can simplify everything. You and I are similar in the things that we have determined to be worthy of going on in our mornings, in our lives, and prepping the night before really streamlining everything.

And all of those things are incredibly helpful. They bring balance and simplicity to our days and simplify everything in our homes, and that is really the goal. We want more time to enjoy the things and the people that we cherish the most. As I am listening to you, the big takeaway today comes. From the things that I’m always talking about on the Intentional Edit Podcast and being intentional with decisions we make regarding our schedules, our routines, the things that we do in our [00:24:00]homes, what belongings we decide are important enough to have, taking up the space and taking up our time.

Now these things we know contribute to stress and overwhelm and tackling these with intention will reduce the overwhelm and truly simplify our lives and our homes. I know you talk about these on your podcast and share all of this amazing information. So can you let our listeners know where they can connect with you and how they can hear your.

Yes, definitely. And thank you again for having me. I’m so glad that we connected in this lovely podcast space. So my podcast is Mom’s Overcoming Overwhelm, so you can find it wherever you find your podcast. And I have a community on Facebook where we do decluttering challenges every other week, 15 minutes a day, Monday to Friday, just kind of that quick in and out, building the habit, building the routine like you were saying.

So yeah, those are probably the best places that you can find. [00:25:00] Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. I loved having you here you shared some great information. I am happy that you could share this with my listeners today. Yeah. Thanks again for having me.

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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!

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