Decide when you'll decide

Don't waste time on decisions you can't make now

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is that if there is a decision you need
to make but you can't make it at this moment,

(00:23):
commit to a specific time in the future when you
will make the decision. In other words, decide when you'll decide.
This means you won't forget and you can hopefully stop
ruminating about it until then. So sometimes there are plans
or decisions that have to be made, but something else

(00:45):
has to happen first before you can make your plans.
For instance, maybe you would like to renovate your kitchen,
but you want to know for sure that you are
getting that raise before you sign a contract. You know
you'll need to rework your childcare schedule well once the
school year starts, but you don't know when all your kids'
activities will be, so you don't know the exact hours

(01:06):
you will need help. You need to know whether your
whole family will be traveling for all of Thanksgiving or
whether your spouse will be home for some of the
time to know what days you're going to need pet care.
Even if you are ready to make plans other people
may not be inexplicably. Some medical practices and specialties where

(01:27):
you are supposed to go annually don't let you make
appointments more than six months in advance, so you need
to remember to call and decide on an appointment in
six months. Or maybe you would be fine scheduling dinner
with a friend a month in advance, but your friend
operates on more of a three days out sort of
planning cadence. There is not a lot of upside to

(01:50):
spending a lot of time thinking about these exact logistics
in these scenarios because you don't have enough information to
move forward. I mean, you can do prep work. For instance,
if you are thinking of doing a major kitchen renovation,
you can start getting recommendations on contractors and talking with
a few of them to get a sense of what

(02:11):
this would all cost and what the timeline would be.
You can figure out which doggy daycares tend to have
space over Thanksgiving. But you probably won't make exact locked
in plans right now, so decide when you will decide.
You will know on that raise one way or another
by October first, and so that is when you will

(02:33):
decide on your kitchen. You will have a conversation with
your babysitter the first week of September about what the
school schedule is looking like. You can estimate when you
are likely to have the facts you need to make
the decision, and then set a reminder to revisit the
decision on that day, put a note on your calendar,

(02:53):
or create some other way to make sure that this
is front of mind. Then then once you have decided
when you will decide and set a reminder, you can
put the unsettled plans aside for the moment. Now. I
know this is hard. Personally, I like to close all
open loops, so I might have gone ahead and just

(03:17):
booked the doggy day care for all of Thanksgiving and
figured I could always use fewer days. But in many cases,
decisions don't have to be made right away. You can
decide to decide in the future when the appointed time
for making decisions or plans arrives. If you still can't
make a decision for some reason, well no worries. Just

(03:39):
reschedule the decision point and set a new reminder. When
you decide when you will decide, and set a reminder.
You avoid stewing over things that you can't do anything about.
And because of the reminder, you also avoid worrying that
you will forget to make plans when the time comes.

(04:00):
Scheduling your decision ensure as you will make the plans
when you need to and freeze you up for focusing
on other things in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.

(04:25):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(04:48):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.