March 15, 2024 • 36 mins
Have you ever stood at a coffee shop, menu in hand, paralyzed by the sheer number of choices? You're not alone. Today's episode peels back the layers of decision fatigue, revealing how our daily micro-decisions—from what drink to order to how we tackle our workload—can lead to a mental gridlock, and how medications like Ritalin might just change the game by tweaking our brain's dopamine levels. I get personal about my own journey with ADHD and how finding my peak productivity window has made all the difference. Plus, we dive into a National Institute of Mental Health study, discussing its eye-opening insights on motivation versus cognitive ability.
Sometimes, the smartest decision is asking for help, and marketing professor Mary Steffel's tea dilemma at Teavana proves just that. We explore the art of delegating decisions—be it through a helpful salesperson's nudge or a clever marketing strategy that makes choosing a joy instead of a chore. As we unpack the stories from Teavana and Nespresso, we show how the option to delegate can lead to more fulfilling experiences and how we can apply this wisdom to cut through the daily cacophony of choices.
But what happens when the stakes are higher than just choosing a tea flavor? Enter the NFL, where choices can define careers and legacies. We analyze how public opinion and the allure of a famous name like Arch Manning can sway team decisions during the draft. Sharing stories of success and scrutiny, we highlight the power of shared decision-making, all the while offering strategies like the 'do, delay, delegate, delete' framework to embrace our limitations and lead a life more focused and intentional. Join us as we tackle the maze of multitasking and learn to navigate life's decisions with confidence.
Sometimes, the smartest decision is asking for help, and marketing professor Mary Steffel's tea dilemma at Teavana proves just that. We explore the art of delegating decisions—be it through a helpful salesperson's nudge or a clever marketing strategy that makes choosing a joy instead of a chore. As we unpack the stories from Teavana and Nespresso, we show how the option to delegate can lead to more fulfilling experiences and how we can apply this wisdom to cut through the daily cacophony of choices.
But what happens when the stakes are higher than just choosing a tea flavor? Enter the NFL, where choices can define careers and legacies. We analyze how public opinion and the allure of a famous name like Arch Manning can sway team decisions during the draft. Sharing stories of success and scrutiny, we highlight the power of shared decision-making, all the while offering strategies like the 'do, delay, delegate, delete' framework to embrace our limitations and lead a life more focused and intentional. Join us as we tackle the maze of multitasking and learn to navigate life's decisions with confidence.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the Innovate Everything
podcast.
I'm your host, john Mowed.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And I'm your other host, Caitlin Mowed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You'll notice in front of you today a very
strange assortment of beverages,and there's a reason for that.
So this morning I woke up and Igot the kids to school and I
did some work calls and then Igot back to the house and I had
to get some stuff ready for aparty this weekend and we've got
an event this evening andthere's just so much going on
(00:28):
that I'm standing in front ofthe whiskey cabinet looking
through it and I'm saying do Iwant to go oaky?
Do I want to go sweet?
Do I want to go smoky?
What direction do I want totake this week's beverage?
And then I got another call andI ran off into a different
direction and I had to go backto some party stuff and before I
knew it it was five minutesbefore recording.
(00:50):
And so before you you have not awhiskey, not a rum, but an izzy
, which is a sparklingblackberry fruit juice beverage.
You've also got a LaCroix limeand a Zoa energy drink.
And the reason that we havethese three things is because I
think by the time the show wasgetting ready to start, I just
(01:11):
had a little bit of decisionfatigue.
Decision fatigue occurs whenthe quality of my decisions
deteriorate, it can lead to aradical seeming decisions or
impulse purchases, decreasedself-reliance, a little bit of
mental shortcuts, and that'swhat I did today.
I did a mental shortcut.
(01:32):
I said you know what?
Who needs a weekly whiskey?
Who needs that?
Let's just drink some izzy.
And so I took that shortcut asa means of just getting through
my day, and I think it's a goodmoment and time to talk about
decision fatigue and how itimpacts us on a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Well, first of all, this is a lot of carbonation
Correct, so we probably won't bedrinking as he takes a sip of
his carbonated beverage.
I will not be drinking on thispodcast because then I will be
burping on this podcast, butthis is.
He looks delicious.
I've had izzy before.
I think everyone's had izzybefore.
It's pretty mainstream, right.
(02:13):
So that looks good.
I will drink that after we'redone here.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
The best way to open a show with decision fatigue, in
my opinion, is to talk aboutdecision fatigue in our everyday
lives.
Now I know personally for me.
When I was younger, I wasdiagnosed with ADHD and so I was
given Ritalin all throughschool and I remember, at one
point very specifically, I had amoment I think it was eighth or
(02:40):
ninth grade where I actuallyI'm sorry, it was sixth grade
that I stopped.
I started pretending to take itand not taking my medicine
because I didn't want to take it, and then I got in trouble with
the school because you didn'ttake your medicine and then in
ninth grade I just said no, I'mnot doing it.
So I didn't take Ritalin allthrough high school.
One of the reasons I did notlike Ritalin I had an increased
(03:04):
sense of it wasn't mentalclarity for me, it wasn't mental
focus and Ritalin.
The whole idea of Ritalin isthat it's going to increase
effectively your dopamine levelsand it's going to increase that
risk reward factor in your mind, and so, because I'm a
generally happier person, mydopamine levels tend to be a
(03:24):
little higher.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The baseline is high.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
My baseline is high, correct?
What Ritalin was doing in myparticular case is it was almost
kind of making my judgment lessimpactful.
I didn't feel like myself andso I didn't like taking it.
So I stopped taking it and Istumbled across this study from
the National Institute of MentalHealth where they studied
(03:47):
Ritalin and its relation todopamine and decision making and
they found that Ritalin itmight not aid study by enhancing
cognitive abilities, butinstead influencing motivation
through dopamine.
So what it does is, instead ofincreasing your focus, like the
teachers and people thought itdid, at least in the 90s, it
(04:10):
just increases that dopaminelevel, which makes you more
likely to take on a bigger taskand forgo a little bit of the
risk and seek of that reward.
And they studied 50 people fromages 18 to 43.
And what they found isparticipants with higher level
of dopamine in their striatumcaudate nucleus.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Nailed it.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Nailed it.
They were more likely to choosedifficult tasks for monetary
rewards, indicating that theyfocused more on the benefits
than the costs.
And I know personally for me,someone who's a little bit
naturally higher in dopamine Itend to chase the reward.
I don't really worry so muchabout the cost.
I figure the cost of the.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
You're going to test it back.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
The cost is negligible in the grand scheme
of things.
I want that reward, and whatthey discovered is that the
increase in the dopamine changedthe participants' cost-benefit
sensitivity, making those whoare initially lower in dopamine
more willing to choose hardermental tasks and focus more on
the rewards.
And I think for me that was theswitch.
(05:18):
It would almost increase mydopamine levels too much, and so
I was almost a gambler, and soI would find that I would bite
off way more than I could chew.
I would get way too investedinto these larger, more complex
projects that maybe I didn'teven understand, and I found
(05:39):
myself kind of not wanting thatand it kind of made me Toward
the end of the day, after liketwo o'clock, when you get that
normal little bit of mental fog,I was a zombie.
I was just absolutely clockedout.
I didn't even want to be thereanymore and it kind of got in
the way of that natural up anddown and the only answer to that
is to increase the medicinallevels.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Is your mental fog hour really two o'clock oh?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
That is so interesting.
I feel like that's prettycommon.
That is not my mental fog hour.
I am full seam ahead of twoo'clock.
Do not interrupt me.
Between the hours of 11 andfour I am whatever I'm doing.
I am at the peak of myperformance at two o'clock.
We should probably considerdoing an episode on that at some
point, like when you're themost efficient, because it's
(06:27):
different for different people.
I mean, it's not totally unique, but I know two o'clock is a
typical lag time for most humans.
It's definitely not my brainfog hour.
Sorry, I didn't mean to derailyou.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Maximizing your efficiency or maximizing your
production yeah.
Your production hour Based onhours yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Anyway, back to ADHD.
I do not have ADHD, althoughthis moment might prove
otherwise.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
No, we're done with the ADHD story.
That was just something that Ithought was an interesting
correlation between dopamine anddecision making.
I think one of the things that,to me at least, is the most
dramatic when it comes todopamine decision making is if
we think about our everydayworld you're talking social
(07:14):
media, we're talking complexdecision making being almost
crowdsourced into let's ask myfriends.
I had someone the other day onInstagram it was a friend of
mine from college and theyposted on Instagram what TV show
should I watch?
And it was three or fouroptions of TV show and initially
I thought to myself what doesanyone care?
(07:35):
Why would you crowdsource suchan almost benign thing?
And then I realized that that'sprobably a form of decision
fatigue, but also that dopaminehit of acceptance of what is
everyone else watching.
That person probably wanted tosee whatever one else was voting
for, because that's odds are,that's what they watched and
they get a little bit ofgratification from that.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I actually have the exact opposite reaction to
something like that.
I've seen that exact post, Ithink, or something similar.
I think it's incredibly wise tocrowdsource decisions like that
, and I have a story that I canget into here in a few minutes
about a great example of aprofessor who studied this whole
(08:18):
concept but being able to takea decision, like you said,
that's benign, like that's notgoing to affect his or her life.
It doesn't actually matter whatthis person watches, but
instead of sitting there andending up not watching anything
because they can't make thedecision, or falling into a
review poll trying to figure outwhich one is going to be better
(08:41):
, they're trusting their network.
You make that decision for themand freeing up bandwidth in
their mind.
I think that's great.
I need to do more of that in myown life With my friends how I
should spend my leisure timewhen I can't decide between
movie A and B.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Let's do your story first, but we'll dive into
outsourcing your benigndecisions, Because there's a
reward there, sure, from thedecision having been made.
The biggest component of thedecision is that dopamine hit
when it comes to processing andmaking that decision.
And then again the dopamine hitof the reward, that decision
having been made and I thinkknowing how to regulate,
(09:22):
especially in today's day andage, the dopamine hits that
you're getting and how to levelthose out and get the return on
your dopamine investment isprobably pretty important.
But let's get to that story.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah.
So as we were talking aboutthis episode idea, I started
just looking around to see if Icould find some interesting
stories or angles that have todo with decision fatigue or
decision paralysis.
I think we're all prettycomfortable and familiar with
this concept, but I wanted tofind something different.
We're all familiar with SteveJobs and his whole mantra on
(09:58):
decision making, why he wearsthe same thing every day, for
example.
His whole goal is to strip awaythe mundane decisions that are
going to fill up his mind, andit's going to take bandwidth
away from making those bigbusiness decisions that he
really needs to be present for.
(10:18):
And I did find a story that isa different approach.
So there's a woman named MarySteffel hopefully I'm saying
that correctly and she's aprofessor of marketing at
Northeastern, and her wholefocus as a marketer is studying
how people make difficultdecisions, which is really,
really important when you're inmarketing.
(10:38):
She was out with them all oneday.
She stumbled into do youremember Tiavana?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Oh yeah, I do.
I love Tiavana, are they still?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
around.
I have no idea.
Are malls still around?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
That's a good point.
Okay, I just Maybe that wall oftins full of tea might have
been for someone who likes teaand likes the smell of tea.
That place was amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I agree.
So she went into a TiavanaTiavana, tiavana, tiavana, that
sounds more eyebrow.
She walked into a Tiavana andshe is an avid tea drinker and
she was immediately hit withdecision paralysis because of
what you just said walls andwalls of tea, tins of tea, and
(11:23):
if you've been into a Tiavanabefore, they also have samples,
so you're it's just overwhelming, to say the least.
So the first time she went to aTiavana, she was completely
overwhelmed and she walked outwithout making a single purchase
, which made me think about yourstory this morning.
You went to pick a bourbon andyou didn't pick any bourbon.
Here we are drinking Izzy's.
(11:44):
So she left that making asingle purchase.
And then she came back and shehad a different strategy.
Instead of trying to figure outwhich tea is the best for her,
she went directly to asalesperson so here's what that
delegation comes into play.
And she asked the salespersonwhat do you like?
(12:05):
What do you recommend?
Here's what I like.
Help me choose.
They made a suggestion and shetrusted them and she made a
purchase.
She then said later that thoseteas that that salesperson had
suggested to her based on herpreferences became some of her
favorite teas.
So it was a really greatoutcome and she started to roll
(12:28):
this strategy out in her normalday to day life, in her
professional life, just findingopportunities to delegate
decisions when there is anabundance of choice.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I think of.
Sorry, I'm going to take us offthe rails here for a second,
but I just remember my firsttime going into a tea vana and
you're talking about engagingthe salesperson and I walk in
and I'm you know they, oh, doyou like tea?
I love tea, sure, and at thetime I was actually looking into
founding a tea company.
I was really into tea, actuallyand I walk into the building
(13:03):
and I do like tea.
I'm like, yep, I sure do Like,what do you like?
And I rattle off three or fourteas that I currently drink.
And I remember I walked outwith and this is the brilliance
of tea vana two things.
I walked out with a silver leafoolong.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You remember the name .
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah Well, I don't remember the name of the name,
but it was a silver leaf oolongand I remember it was like
handpicked by monkeys at the topof this mountain.
I don't even know if it wastrue, which it doesn't matter.
Right, it was actually a reallygood tea.
It was very.
It was a very complex butsubtle tea and I liked it a lot.
And I remember leaving tea vanaand thinking to myself there's
(13:39):
two things they did that arebrilliant.
One is they have them in bigtins and they sell them by the
ounce.
So I don't know about you, butI have no idea what an ounce of
tea is supposed to look like.
I just trust them that an ounceof dried leaves is about that,
sure.
But also, where they'rebrilliant is that it's such a
great storytelling method andactually I think it almost
limits some of the decisionfatigue instead of being
(14:01):
overwhelmed by all the differentflavors and varieties and
whatnot.
They have you smell it and theyjust kind of see what interests
you.
And the other tea of vana teathat I was really big into, I
bought solely on the smell,which was a toasted coconut and
it was also a new one, and itwas just the aroma of that tea I
still remember to this day.
So they get you engaged andthey actually limit decision
(14:21):
fatigue, which, in the tea world, is incredible.
You go into the tea aisle, nota tea of vana full of tins where
you can't see anything, justwalking into like your local
grocery store, and looking atthe tea aisle is overwhelming.
They've turned every dried leafyou've ever seen in your life
into a tea, and so taking thatoverwhelming experience and
making it storytelling, in myopinion, actually limits the
decision fatigue because itlimits you from having to read a
(14:44):
thousand boxes.
They made it into an experience.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, they're really ahead of their time and I think,
when it comes to marketing tea,making tea exciting and, like
you said, creating a story and afeeling around the tea that
you're purchasing, and beingable to say decades later that
you know you were buying teathat was maybe potentially
hand-picked by monkeys I thinkit was still very overwhelming.
But I think what you're tryingto say is that if you did
(15:09):
utilize the resource that wasavailable to you the salesperson
then it suddenly became verypractical, a very easy type of
purchase to make.
That makes me think a littlebit about Nespresso stores.
I feel like Nespresso storesthey took the Tiavana concept
and they stripped it down thatyou didn't walk in and have a
(15:31):
headspin.
If you've been to a Nespressostore, you walk in and there
really isn't product, it's justpeople, and they're there to
greet you, they talk to you,they know exactly what machine
you have at home.
It's a curated experience.
You can try new blends ifyou're in the mood, or you can
just tell them what you like andpick it up.
(15:53):
So there is no headspin whenyou walk in with oh my gosh,
look at all this coffee.
And Nespresso has a lot ofdifferent brews and blends.
So I think that they did a goodjob of forcing you into that
resource and not gettingdecision fatigue, because, as
I'll get into in a minute,decision fatigue leads to
paralysis and that leads to zerosales.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Gotcha, so okay.
So this lady walks into theTiavana and she walks out.
What did she do about it?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So, as I said, she started to roll out the strategy
of delegating decisionsthroughout her daily life.
But she's a professor and sheis an academic, and so what she
did was she ended up going backand rolling out a study to her
students, an experiment of sorts.
She recreated the Tiavanaexperience that she had and she
(16:44):
asked her participants toimagine that they were shopping
for tea and she put them intotwo groups.
The first group had all the teaoptions available to them and
they had to make a choice.
The second group had the sameoptions available plus an expert
(17:04):
in tea to help guide themthrough the process, and they
were given choices.
You can buy all the tea youwant.
You could buy no tea.
The choice is yours.
And what they found was peoplewere less likely to choose
anything when they had too manyoptions, but those who had
someone to delegate the decisionto were twice as likely to make
(17:26):
a decision when they hadsomeone there to help them with
it.
The learning or the takeawaywould be if you have the option
to delegate, it'll enable you toovercome difficult decisions as
the takeaway.
So I want to tie this back towhat you said earlier about
crowdsourcing, and I know you'regonna talk a little bit more
(17:47):
about that, right, but thiswhole idea of crowdsourcing, or
utilizing human resources tomake decisions, is really
motivating because it helps usto not only avoid or shoulder
the risk of the wrong choice,but it also enables us to
celebrate the good choice withthose that have helped us get
(18:10):
there.
So there is a huge offsetting ofrisk and a higher reward there,
and it just helps you makethose big life not only life
impacting decisions, but thosetrivial decisions quicker, and
especially in cases where it'sbetter to make a decision than
no decision at all.
Obviously, walking into aTiavana and walking out without
(18:32):
a T, you'll be okay.
But if you're running abusiness and you need to make a
decision between ABCD and you'recompletely fatigued or
paralyzed by that decision,relying on or consulting your
team or the people that you haveput in place to help you run
that department, making adecision with their help is
(18:54):
better than just putting it offand kicking the can down the
road.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I would relate the most comfortably to myself at
least to football.
And so there is a third stringI think it's third string.
It might be a backupquarterback at the University of
Texas named Arch Manning.
And Arch Manning is, as of now,he hasn't had a full starting
season, so we don't know whathe's gonna be.
(19:18):
But Arch Manning and the coupleof games he's played, it's just
been kind of okay.
Now he's young and he's gotsome development to go.
But I can tell you that a shadowof the doubt Arch Manning will
be drafted in the first round ofthe NFL draft, and no reason
other than his.
He's related to Hayden and EliManning and Archie Manning, his
(19:39):
grandfather, three quarterbackswho are in the Hall of Fame or
will be at least to some point.
And when you talk about crowdsourcing, decision making, the
NFL, when it comes to whateverteam drafts Arch Manning, that
is a crowd sourced decision.
They know for a fact that if Idraft Arch Manning number two
(19:59):
overall or whatever, nobody willblame me, even if he ends up
being horrible, nobody willblame me for taking that risk,
because everyone understandsthat.
Why wouldn't you draft a thirdgeneration quarterback from a
family who's gets twogenerations of Hall of Fame
level quarterbacks.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
But even if that wasn't the case, right, and they
and they didn't draft him andthey picked some arbitrary
person, who could you blame?
It's the NFL.
You know that there are howmany people make that decision,
who contribute to that decisionof who they're drafting in what
round?
I'm asking you, I have no idea.
I mean it's more than one.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, it's probably 30 or right.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So you know you could say collectively like, oh man,
the dolphins really blew thatpick, but that's the point.
You're not gonna say, oh man,mcdaniel really messed up that
draft pick, or whoever you thinkis responsible, because it's a
group effort.
And so I Think that's yourpoint right crowd sourcing
offsets the risk because you'reyou're doing it as part of a
(20:59):
team.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Correct.
But I mean there there was someburden of responsibility.
In NFL, like the generalmanager and the head coach
usually get most of the flackit's, it doesn't go well,
regardless of the team belowthem.
It's still their decision atthe end of the day.
But when it comes to certainpicks, certain people that are
overwhelmingly popular in thepublic, you you really can't go
(21:21):
wrong, right, even if they're anabsolute bust, nobody blames
you because everyone would havedone the same thing.
There are other times where youdraft somebody very high, johnny
Manziel, for instance, which isa quarterback, another
quarterback.
Johnny Manziel came out ofcollege and when he was picked
high in the draft, nobodyunderstood it.
Baker Mayfield was the same way.
(21:41):
I think Baker Mayfield wentfirst overall and nobody.
Most of the scouts were like Idon't know, he doesn't seem that
good to me, but they chose itright and there's a heavy burden
with that decision.
So when, in the NFL at least,when you draft someone really
high, if they're not good or ifthey're not perceived as an
overwhelming favorite, like itwas a no-brainer to draft that
(22:04):
person, there's an immenseamount of pressure and you can
lose your job for drafting them.
When it's someone like ArchManning, where the public is, is
cheering their name and andwants them drafted, knows
they're gonna be great andwhatever.
There's no, almost no pressureto draft that person you did.
They just pull the trigger andsay go ahead and draft them
because you're crowdsourcing it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So you're considering the fans as part of that
crowdsource in this example.
Yeah, the family to a degree,like obviously they don't have a
buying power, but their voiceis loud enough to where the team
can then fall back on that andsay, like you said, there's less
risk because the public hassanctioned this pick.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, because I mean, at the end of the day, the
ownership of whatever teamyou're following, they listen to
the fans to some degree,because Ticket sales and jersey
sales and all those things thatgo into it, the fans vote with
their pocketbook.
And if you pick anoverwhelmingly unpopular choice
and the fans stop showing up orbooing you as you go on the
field, the ownership hears thatright to some degree.
(23:04):
And Oftentimes if you have allthe talent the world and you're
just not winning games, you firethe coach if you have, if
you're outperforming your talent, but you just can't seem to get
the right talent in thebuilding, you fire the general
manager.
If you're just bad, you fire.
If you want right, you justfire all the humans that you can
find and then justquote-unquote, rebuild.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
I would love to watch a season just just one season
of NFL football when the entiredraft is run by fans.
That would be how interestingthat be.
You would obviously have lotsof die-hard football fans.
You know a lot about playersand follow careers and have some
(23:46):
great Knowledge.
And then you'd have people likeme who would pick based off of
eye color well, so thereactually is a an amateur
football league.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
I guess it's professional because they get
paid, but there's a footballleague where the fans decide.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Well, it's basically fantasy football, but I'd like
to see it roll out.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, no, but there isn't there there is a football
league where the fans choose theplace.
Where were their crowd sourcevoted on what play?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Exactly exactly, which is kind of interesting.
I think we fun.
It would end horribly for someteams, but it'd be fun but I
digress, so let's go back towhere we were.
I don't remember who are wetalking about?
Talking about.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So Arch Manning does this research study after he
goes into teach Tiavana and I'mkidding.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Oh, arch Manning.
So if we're gonna apply this tobusiness, which I think is
always our end goal, it'simportant to remember that.
Well, yes, it's really great toeliminate trivial decisions
Like what you're gonna wearevery day.
I know you are really good atthis.
You wear the same thing everysingle day.
You have like three coloreddifferent colors, three dark
(24:54):
colored variations of the sameshirt, so that's great.
I think that is a greatstrategy to clear your mind and
keep the clutter out so you canmake those really hard decisions
later.
But we're still finite.
So, in order to avoid moredecision fatigue or anything
that leads to paralysis, trustyour team, trust people you have
(25:16):
around you.
If you don't have anyone aroundyou, find people.
They don't have to be employeesor business partners or
investors.
They can be friends who youtrust are acumen.
They could be mentors.
They can be people on socialmedia that you follow, your
LinkedIn connections, et cetera.
But trust those people becausethere's a place for
(25:36):
crowdsourcing decisions.
If it can offload you and thatthe fatigue, do it just to go
back really quick and then handthis over back to you.
John Mary even said that for alot of her talks that she does
on this she will crowdsource thetitles of those talks.
I mean, she's the expert shecould title it.
Why she doesn't need to makethat decision.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, I think the next step would be okay.
So we're going to crowdsourcesome decisions.
How does that apply to limitingdecision fatigue?
Do we just crowdsourceeverything?
And I've broken down what Ithink are some great ways of
limiting decision fatigue andprioritizing decisions.
(26:19):
So, discipline and simplicity,embracing daily routines and
simplifying your life to focuson what truly matters.
Prioritize wisely.
Seek wisdom and prioritization,which you were just speaking of
.
Rest and renewal regularlyincorporating periods of rest
and spiritual renewal into yourschedule to refresh and renew
(26:41):
yourself, to have the clarity tomake some of those decisions.
Seek wisdom and counsel.
Make informed decisions byseeking wisdom, guidance and
counsel from advisors.
Embrace challenges with grace.
Face challenges and setbackswith grace and resilience,
trusting in a higher purpose andlearning from your failures.
And then, lastly, live withpurpose and service.
(27:03):
Lead by example, serving otherswith humility and purpose to
help make your decision making.
It more about the purpose thatyou have for your life and less
about just trying to navigatethrough it.
And I think you touched onprioritizing wisely.
Crowdsourcing falls into that.
But let's talk rest and renewal.
I think in your you have atendency to get really into the
(27:30):
weeds of the details of things.
You like to be involved.
You like to know what's goingon, you like to organize things
and I've seen you in the pastget almost overwhelmed by those
things and you don't take thetime for rest and renewal.
And I know that recently youbrought in a, like an assistant,
to organize your calendar andhelp you to understand what kind
(27:51):
of time you have in the day toprioritize some tasks, and I
know that when we've discussedit, you've brought in rest and
renewal.
So what does that look like?
And tell everyone what I justsaid.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
There's two parts, the first being when it comes to
the tools I use, understandingthat I have limitations when it
comes to switching tasks.
So I work from home, fulldisclosure.
I work from home uh, fullyremote, and I'm a mother, as you
know.
Um, surprise, um, I'm a motherand I have I have side gigs like
(28:28):
this, and I'm a writer.
So there's a lot, there's a lotgoing on and I don't task
switch.
Well, what that means is like,when I'm in mom mode, I don't.
I'm not thinking about thispodcast.
When I'm working in my nine tofive, I'm not thinking about the
fact that you asked me to waterthe plants on my lunch break.
It's really hard for me to takeeverything that requires my
(28:52):
attention in the course of a dayand blend it.
I'm very compartmentalized whenit comes to the tasks I have to
get done.
So this tool that I'veincorporated, which is a
calendar management system Ithink it's okay to drop them on
this, right, it's motion, um,and it integrates with all of my
calendars and it helps meprioritize so I can set
deadlines on things.
(29:12):
So if you tell me at nine am,hey, I need you to water the
plants, I can plug into motion.
I need to water the plants.
Today.
It's really high priority, thehealth of my marriage is
depending on this and it'll plugit in where I have free time in
between meetings.
You know, maybe on my lunchbreak, everything is in there
from, like I said, all mymeetings, all the tasks I had to
(29:33):
get done for work, when I'mpicking up the girls from school
, when I need to start dinner,it's all plugged in, and so the
app will use AI, I guess, for,you know, lack of a better term
to plug in all those tasksthroughout the day.
So as I'm working, it'll justtell me oh, you have a little
break, go water those plants.
So that's been how I've beenbeing more efficient with my
(29:54):
task switching and then theother um, you know, back to the
whole point of this segment,which is rest and renewal.
Um, something that I haveverbalized to you is I can't do
everything.
I think there's.
I think there's.
This is a lie.
This is my personal opinionthat that you know you can do it
all.
I think it's a lie.
I think it's very dangerous tothink that you know you can't,
(30:17):
you can't have it all.
Um, particularly from myposition as a woman and a mother
, this idea of you know youcan't have it all.
You can have a career and youcan, you know, be a really
attentive parent and all this?
I don't.
I don't think that's true, Idon't think it's fair to put
that on people, especially women, but I think it applies to all
(30:37):
people.
I don't care what gender youare, I don't care what race you
are, I don't care where you work.
If you're home, you can't haveit all.
There's your finite and there'sonly so many hours in the day
and so communicating to you, umand to everyone, like I have
limited resources, I have to beable to let things fall off, you
know, not get to certain things.
(30:58):
And prioritizing my, my task,switching, has helped because I
can say this is more highpriority, it's okay if I don't
get to that, giving myself grace.
You know, like you said, I getin the weeds, being able to pull
myself back out and say it'sokay if I don't get to that,
because I do need to let my hairdown, decompress, read, et
cetera.
(31:18):
So I think, coming to gripswith the fact that we've been
said this idea that we can haveit all, we can do it all.
We're not robots.
We have tools that can help usget close to getting everything
checked off our list, but it'simportant to let things.
Let things be.
There's a season for everything.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, and I think so.
You actually touched on a fewthings there.
Um, you touched.
You touched on embracingchallenges, of grace, right
being being okay, no-transcript.
The idea of and I think I saidthis last week as well is that
failure isn't fatal and successisn't final, and knowing that
(31:58):
you can fail at something or notcomplete a task, and that's
okay.
And I think when you go intolive with purpose and service,
there's a well right you broughtup a few times where there are
things that are important to you.
Right, water in the plantsisn't one of them.
Nope, obviously, my pork plants.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
They have survived.
I want the record to show Ourlove for and is okay.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
But I think living with purpose and I think that's
one of the things that on myside of it I think I do really
well at there's a lot of areas Istruggle, but I think, with
keeping in mind what's importantin life and just letting the
rest fall.
A long time ago, somebody kindof taught me the do delay, oh
(32:41):
yes, delete.
I think it is do delay, delete.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Do delay delegate?
Ah, delete, delete.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Do, delay, delegate, delete.
I think I'm really really goodat do, delay and delete, but
sometimes when I get to delegate, I have a hard time kind of
pushing that off, and so on myside of it that's where Seek
Wisdom and Council comes intoplay, where I have a lot of
mentors that are helping me makesome of the decisions in my
(33:08):
life and recently, as I've madebig decisions that I think are
very important.
I now have a group of men thatI call and we talk through what
I'm looking at where it is, andthese are people that I respect
and people who value the samethings I do family-wise and
career-wise, and I value theiropinions and so bringing those
(33:31):
pieces and parts intodecision-making.
Now, you're never going tocompletely remove decision
fatigue it's just not gonnahappen but you can dramatically
shift that opinion on it, right,and I think next week we're
gonna talk a little bit withJohn Jeremillo specifically
about you can't do it all,because when you go on Instagram
(33:52):
or the dopamine hit of socialmedia period, when you go on
these places, there's so many ofthese little gurus that are
online telling you how to liveyour best life and how to
succeed in business, and yougotta grind and you gotta get up
at 4 am and all these thingsthere's all these people telling
you these things and all thatkind of can result in is burnout
(34:13):
, because you don't see themwhen they're down, you only see
them when they're up, andthey're always up.
And so if you feel there's anexpectation where you are
staying always up, that's whereJohn Jeremillo and I are gonna
have that conversation of youcan't do it all.
How do we address that?
So tune in next week for that.
Outside of that, you gotta befinal thoughts as far as
(34:33):
decision fatigue that you'd liketo leave the people of the
podcast.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
The people of the IT hours we need.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Oh, we do.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
We do need a fan name .
We'll get, we'll workshop that.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Etoes.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I wanna put it on motion Schedules a brain
storming sesh Etoes, etoes,etoes.
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
All right, not Etoes, not Etoes.
Vote on Instagram.
We'll put it out to Instagram.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Love that idea.
We'll crowdsource it.
We don't need to come up withit.
I think usually fans come upwith their own names anyway.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
You know, we can just wait for them to do it
themselves.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
We have like 10 fans, so we'll just come and call
after the show.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah, we'll just send out an email to each and every
listener.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
It can be a text message.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
This could have been an email.
Thank you so much for joiningus, as always, and this is the
Innovate Everything podcast,where we unpack and explore
innovation as innovators.
See you next week.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Bye.
Hello and welcome back to the Innovate Everything
podcast.
I'm your host, john Mowed.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
And I'm your other host, Caitlin Mowed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You'll notice in front of you today a very
strange assortment of beverages,and there's a reason for that.
So this morning I woke up and Igot the kids to school and I
did some work calls and then Igot back to the house and I had
to get some stuff ready for aparty this weekend and we've got
an event this evening andthere's just so much going on
(00:28):
that I'm standing in front ofthe whiskey cabinet looking
through it and I'm saying do Iwant to go oaky?
Do I want to go sweet?
Do I want to go smoky?
What direction do I want totake this week's beverage?
And then I got another call andI ran off into a different
direction and I had to go backto some party stuff and before I
knew it it was five minutesbefore recording.
(00:50):
And so before you you have not awhiskey, not a rum, but an izzy
, which is a sparklingblackberry fruit juice beverage.
You've also got a LaCroix limeand a Zoa energy drink.
And the reason that we havethese three things is because I
think by the time the show wasgetting ready to start, I just
(01:11):
had a little bit of decisionfatigue.
Decision fatigue occurs whenthe quality of my decisions
deteriorate, it can lead to aradical seeming decisions or
impulse purchases, decreasedself-reliance, a little bit of
mental shortcuts, and that'swhat I did today.
I did a mental shortcut.
(01:32):
I said you know what?
Who needs a weekly whiskey?
Who needs that?
Let's just drink some izzy.
And so I took that shortcut asa means of just getting through
my day, and I think it's a goodmoment and time to talk about
decision fatigue and how itimpacts us on a daily basis.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Well, first of all, this is a lot of carbonation
Correct, so we probably won't bedrinking as he takes a sip of
his carbonated beverage.
I will not be drinking on thispodcast because then I will be
burping on this podcast, butthis is.
He looks delicious.
I've had izzy before.
I think everyone's had izzybefore.
It's pretty mainstream, right.
(02:13):
So that looks good.
I will drink that after we'redone here.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
The best way to open a show with decision fatigue, in
my opinion, is to talk aboutdecision fatigue in our everyday
lives.
Now I know personally for me.
When I was younger, I wasdiagnosed with ADHD and so I was
given Ritalin all throughschool and I remember, at one
point very specifically, I had amoment I think it was eighth or
(02:40):
ninth grade where I actuallyI'm sorry, it was sixth grade
that I stopped.
I started pretending to take itand not taking my medicine
because I didn't want to take it, and then I got in trouble with
the school because you didn'ttake your medicine and then in
ninth grade I just said no, I'mnot doing it.
So I didn't take Ritalin allthrough high school.
One of the reasons I did notlike Ritalin I had an increased
(03:04):
sense of it wasn't mentalclarity for me, it wasn't mental
focus and Ritalin.
The whole idea of Ritalin isthat it's going to increase
effectively your dopamine levelsand it's going to increase that
risk reward factor in your mind, and so, because I'm a
generally happier person, mydopamine levels tend to be a
(03:24):
little higher.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
The baseline is high.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
My baseline is high, correct?
What Ritalin was doing in myparticular case is it was almost
kind of making my judgment lessimpactful.
I didn't feel like myself andso I didn't like taking it.
So I stopped taking it and Istumbled across this study from
the National Institute of MentalHealth where they studied
(03:47):
Ritalin and its relation todopamine and decision making and
they found that Ritalin itmight not aid study by enhancing
cognitive abilities, butinstead influencing motivation
through dopamine.
So what it does is, instead ofincreasing your focus, like the
teachers and people thought itdid, at least in the 90s, it
(04:10):
just increases that dopaminelevel, which makes you more
likely to take on a bigger taskand forgo a little bit of the
risk and seek of that reward.
And they studied 50 people fromages 18 to 43.
And what they found isparticipants with higher level
of dopamine in their striatumcaudate nucleus.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Nailed it.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Nailed it.
They were more likely to choosedifficult tasks for monetary
rewards, indicating that theyfocused more on the benefits
than the costs.
And I know personally for me,someone who's a little bit
naturally higher in dopamine Itend to chase the reward.
I don't really worry so muchabout the cost.
I figure the cost of the.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
You're going to test it back.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
The cost is negligible in the grand scheme
of things.
I want that reward, and whatthey discovered is that the
increase in the dopamine changedthe participants' cost-benefit
sensitivity, making those whoare initially lower in dopamine
more willing to choose hardermental tasks and focus more on
the rewards.
And I think for me that was theswitch.
(05:18):
It would almost increase mydopamine levels too much, and so
I was almost a gambler, and soI would find that I would bite
off way more than I could chew.
I would get way too investedinto these larger, more complex
projects that maybe I didn'teven understand, and I found
(05:39):
myself kind of not wanting thatand it kind of made me Toward
the end of the day, after liketwo o'clock, when you get that
normal little bit of mental fog,I was a zombie.
I was just absolutely clockedout.
I didn't even want to be thereanymore and it kind of got in
the way of that natural up anddown and the only answer to that
is to increase the medicinallevels.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Is your mental fog hour really two o'clock oh?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
That is so interesting.
I feel like that's prettycommon.
That is not my mental fog hour.
I am full seam ahead of twoo'clock.
Do not interrupt me.
Between the hours of 11 andfour I am whatever I'm doing.
I am at the peak of myperformance at two o'clock.
We should probably considerdoing an episode on that at some
point, like when you're themost efficient, because it's
(06:27):
different for different people.
I mean, it's not totally unique, but I know two o'clock is a
typical lag time for most humans.
It's definitely not my brainfog hour.
Sorry, I didn't mean to derailyou.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Maximizing your efficiency or maximizing your
production yeah.
Your production hour Based onhours yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Anyway, back to ADHD.
I do not have ADHD, althoughthis moment might prove
otherwise.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
No, we're done with the ADHD story.
That was just something that Ithought was an interesting
correlation between dopamine anddecision making.
I think one of the things that,to me at least, is the most
dramatic when it comes todopamine decision making is if
we think about our everydayworld you're talking social
(07:14):
media, we're talking complexdecision making being almost
crowdsourced into let's ask myfriends.
I had someone the other day onInstagram it was a friend of
mine from college and theyposted on Instagram what TV show
should I watch?
And it was three or fouroptions of TV show and initially
I thought to myself what doesanyone care?
(07:35):
Why would you crowdsource suchan almost benign thing?
And then I realized that that'sprobably a form of decision
fatigue, but also that dopaminehit of acceptance of what is
everyone else watching.
That person probably wanted tosee whatever one else was voting
for, because that's odds are,that's what they watched and
they get a little bit ofgratification from that.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I actually have the exact opposite reaction to
something like that.
I've seen that exact post, Ithink, or something similar.
I think it's incredibly wise tocrowdsource decisions like that
, and I have a story that I canget into here in a few minutes
about a great example of aprofessor who studied this whole
(08:18):
concept but being able to takea decision, like you said,
that's benign, like that's notgoing to affect his or her life.
It doesn't actually matter whatthis person watches, but
instead of sitting there andending up not watching anything
because they can't make thedecision, or falling into a
review poll trying to figure outwhich one is going to be better
(08:41):
, they're trusting their network.
You make that decision for themand freeing up bandwidth in
their mind.
I think that's great.
I need to do more of that in myown life With my friends how I
should spend my leisure timewhen I can't decide between
movie A and B.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Let's do your story first, but we'll dive into
outsourcing your benigndecisions, Because there's a
reward there, sure, from thedecision having been made.
The biggest component of thedecision is that dopamine hit
when it comes to processing andmaking that decision.
And then again the dopamine hitof the reward, that decision
having been made and I thinkknowing how to regulate,
(09:22):
especially in today's day andage, the dopamine hits that
you're getting and how to levelthose out and get the return on
your dopamine investment isprobably pretty important.
But let's get to that story.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah.
So as we were talking aboutthis episode idea, I started
just looking around to see if Icould find some interesting
stories or angles that have todo with decision fatigue or
decision paralysis.
I think we're all prettycomfortable and familiar with
this concept, but I wanted tofind something different.
We're all familiar with SteveJobs and his whole mantra on
(09:58):
decision making, why he wearsthe same thing every day, for
example.
His whole goal is to strip awaythe mundane decisions that are
going to fill up his mind, andit's going to take bandwidth
away from making those bigbusiness decisions that he
really needs to be present for.
(10:18):
And I did find a story that isa different approach.
So there's a woman named MarySteffel hopefully I'm saying
that correctly and she's aprofessor of marketing at
Northeastern, and her wholefocus as a marketer is studying
how people make difficultdecisions, which is really,
really important when you're inmarketing.
(10:38):
She was out with them all oneday.
She stumbled into do youremember Tiavana?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Oh yeah, I do.
I love Tiavana, are they still?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
around.
I have no idea.
Are malls still around?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
That's a good point.
Okay, I just Maybe that wall oftins full of tea might have
been for someone who likes teaand likes the smell of tea.
That place was amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
I agree.
So she went into a TiavanaTiavana, tiavana, tiavana, that
sounds more eyebrow.
She walked into a Tiavana andshe is an avid tea drinker and
she was immediately hit withdecision paralysis because of
what you just said walls andwalls of tea, tins of tea, and
(11:23):
if you've been into a Tiavanabefore, they also have samples,
so you're it's just overwhelming, to say the least.
So the first time she went to aTiavana, she was completely
overwhelmed and she walked outwithout making a single purchase
, which made me think about yourstory this morning.
You went to pick a bourbon andyou didn't pick any bourbon.
Here we are drinking Izzy's.
(11:44):
So she left that making asingle purchase.
And then she came back and shehad a different strategy.
Instead of trying to figure outwhich tea is the best for her,
she went directly to asalesperson so here's what that
delegation comes into play.
And she asked the salespersonwhat do you like?
(12:05):
What do you recommend?
Here's what I like.
Help me choose.
They made a suggestion and shetrusted them and she made a
purchase.
She then said later that thoseteas that that salesperson had
suggested to her based on herpreferences became some of her
favorite teas.
So it was a really greatoutcome and she started to roll
(12:28):
this strategy out in her normalday to day life, in her
professional life, just findingopportunities to delegate
decisions when there is anabundance of choice.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I think of.
Sorry, I'm going to take us offthe rails here for a second,
but I just remember my firsttime going into a tea vana and
you're talking about engagingthe salesperson and I walk in
and I'm you know they, oh, doyou like tea?
I love tea, sure, and at thetime I was actually looking into
founding a tea company.
I was really into tea, actuallyand I walk into the building
(13:03):
and I do like tea.
I'm like, yep, I sure do Like,what do you like?
And I rattle off three or fourteas that I currently drink.
And I remember I walked outwith and this is the brilliance
of tea vana two things.
I walked out with a silver leafoolong.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
You remember the name .
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah Well, I don't remember the name of the name,
but it was a silver leaf oolongand I remember it was like
handpicked by monkeys at the topof this mountain.
I don't even know if it wastrue, which it doesn't matter.
Right, it was actually a reallygood tea.
It was very.
It was a very complex butsubtle tea and I liked it a lot.
And I remember leaving tea vanaand thinking to myself there's
(13:39):
two things they did that arebrilliant.
One is they have them in bigtins and they sell them by the
ounce.
So I don't know about you, butI have no idea what an ounce of
tea is supposed to look like.
I just trust them that an ounceof dried leaves is about that,
sure.
But also, where they'rebrilliant is that it's such a
great storytelling method andactually I think it almost
limits some of the decisionfatigue instead of being
(14:01):
overwhelmed by all the differentflavors and varieties and
whatnot.
They have you smell it and theyjust kind of see what interests
you.
And the other tea of vana teathat I was really big into, I
bought solely on the smell,which was a toasted coconut and
it was also a new one, and itwas just the aroma of that tea I
still remember to this day.
So they get you engaged andthey actually limit decision
(14:21):
fatigue, which, in the tea world, is incredible.
You go into the tea aisle, nota tea of vana full of tins where
you can't see anything, justwalking into like your local
grocery store, and looking atthe tea aisle is overwhelming.
They've turned every dried leafyou've ever seen in your life
into a tea, and so taking thatoverwhelming experience and
making it storytelling, in myopinion, actually limits the
decision fatigue because itlimits you from having to read a
(14:44):
thousand boxes.
They made it into an experience.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, they're really ahead of their time and I think,
when it comes to marketing tea,making tea exciting and, like
you said, creating a story and afeeling around the tea that
you're purchasing, and beingable to say decades later that
you know you were buying teathat was maybe potentially
hand-picked by monkeys I thinkit was still very overwhelming.
But I think what you're tryingto say is that if you did
(15:09):
utilize the resource that wasavailable to you the salesperson
then it suddenly became verypractical, a very easy type of
purchase to make.
That makes me think a littlebit about Nespresso stores.
I feel like Nespresso storesthey took the Tiavana concept
and they stripped it down thatyou didn't walk in and have a
(15:31):
headspin.
If you've been to a Nespressostore, you walk in and there
really isn't product, it's justpeople, and they're there to
greet you, they talk to you,they know exactly what machine
you have at home.
It's a curated experience.
You can try new blends ifyou're in the mood, or you can
just tell them what you like andpick it up.
(15:53):
So there is no headspin whenyou walk in with oh my gosh,
look at all this coffee.
And Nespresso has a lot ofdifferent brews and blends.
So I think that they did a goodjob of forcing you into that
resource and not gettingdecision fatigue, because, as
I'll get into in a minute,decision fatigue leads to
paralysis and that leads to zerosales.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Gotcha, so okay.
So this lady walks into theTiavana and she walks out.
What did she do about it?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So, as I said, she started to roll out the strategy
of delegating decisionsthroughout her daily life.
But she's a professor and sheis an academic, and so what she
did was she ended up going backand rolling out a study to her
students, an experiment of sorts.
She recreated the Tiavanaexperience that she had and she
(16:44):
asked her participants toimagine that they were shopping
for tea and she put them intotwo groups.
The first group had all the teaoptions available to them and
they had to make a choice.
The second group had the sameoptions available plus an expert
(17:04):
in tea to help guide themthrough the process, and they
were given choices.
You can buy all the tea youwant.
You could buy no tea.
The choice is yours.
And what they found was peoplewere less likely to choose
anything when they had too manyoptions, but those who had
someone to delegate the decisionto were twice as likely to make
(17:26):
a decision when they hadsomeone there to help them with
it.
The learning or the takeawaywould be if you have the option
to delegate, it'll enable you toovercome difficult decisions as
the takeaway.
So I want to tie this back towhat you said earlier about
crowdsourcing, and I know you'regonna talk a little bit more
(17:47):
about that, right, but thiswhole idea of crowdsourcing, or
utilizing human resources tomake decisions, is really
motivating because it helps usto not only avoid or shoulder
the risk of the wrong choice,but it also enables us to
celebrate the good choice withthose that have helped us get
(18:10):
there.
So there is a huge offsetting ofrisk and a higher reward there,
and it just helps you makethose big life not only life
impacting decisions, but thosetrivial decisions quicker, and
especially in cases where it'sbetter to make a decision than
no decision at all.
Obviously, walking into aTiavana and walking out without
(18:32):
a T, you'll be okay.
But if you're running abusiness and you need to make a
decision between ABCD and you'recompletely fatigued or
paralyzed by that decision,relying on or consulting your
team or the people that you haveput in place to help you run
that department, making adecision with their help is
(18:54):
better than just putting it offand kicking the can down the
road.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
I would relate the most comfortably to myself at
least to football.
And so there is a third stringI think it's third string.
It might be a backupquarterback at the University of
Texas named Arch Manning.
And Arch Manning is, as of now,he hasn't had a full starting
season, so we don't know whathe's gonna be.
(19:18):
But Arch Manning and the coupleof games he's played, it's just
been kind of okay.
Now he's young and he's gotsome development to go.
But I can tell you that a shadowof the doubt Arch Manning will
be drafted in the first round ofthe NFL draft, and no reason
other than his.
He's related to Hayden and EliManning and Archie Manning, his
(19:39):
grandfather, three quarterbackswho are in the Hall of Fame or
will be at least to some point.
And when you talk about crowdsourcing, decision making, the
NFL, when it comes to whateverteam drafts Arch Manning, that
is a crowd sourced decision.
They know for a fact that if Idraft Arch Manning number two
(19:59):
overall or whatever, nobody willblame me, even if he ends up
being horrible, nobody willblame me for taking that risk,
because everyone understandsthat.
Why wouldn't you draft a thirdgeneration quarterback from a
family who's gets twogenerations of Hall of Fame
level quarterbacks.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
But even if that wasn't the case, right, and they
and they didn't draft him andthey picked some arbitrary
person, who could you blame?
It's the NFL.
You know that there are howmany people make that decision,
who contribute to that decisionof who they're drafting in what
round?
I'm asking you, I have no idea.
I mean it's more than one.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, it's probably 30 or right.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
So you know you could say collectively like, oh man,
the dolphins really blew thatpick, but that's the point.
You're not gonna say, oh man,mcdaniel really messed up that
draft pick, or whoever you thinkis responsible, because it's a
group effort.
And so I Think that's yourpoint right crowd sourcing
offsets the risk because you'reyou're doing it as part of a
(20:59):
team.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Correct.
But I mean there there was someburden of responsibility.
In NFL, like the generalmanager and the head coach
usually get most of the flackit's, it doesn't go well,
regardless of the team belowthem.
It's still their decision atthe end of the day.
But when it comes to certainpicks, certain people that are
overwhelmingly popular in thepublic, you you really can't go
(21:21):
wrong, right, even if they're anabsolute bust, nobody blames
you because everyone would havedone the same thing.
There are other times where youdraft somebody very high, johnny
Manziel, for instance, which isa quarterback, another
quarterback.
Johnny Manziel came out ofcollege and when he was picked
high in the draft, nobodyunderstood it.
Baker Mayfield was the same way.
(21:41):
I think Baker Mayfield wentfirst overall and nobody.
Most of the scouts were like Idon't know, he doesn't seem that
good to me, but they chose itright and there's a heavy burden
with that decision.
So when, in the NFL at least,when you draft someone really
high, if they're not good or ifthey're not perceived as an
overwhelming favorite, like itwas a no-brainer to draft that
(22:04):
person, there's an immenseamount of pressure and you can
lose your job for drafting them.
When it's someone like ArchManning, where the public is, is
cheering their name and andwants them drafted, knows
they're gonna be great andwhatever.
There's no, almost no pressureto draft that person you did.
They just pull the trigger andsay go ahead and draft them
because you're crowdsourcing it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
So you're considering the fans as part of that
crowdsource in this example.
Yeah, the family to a degree,like obviously they don't have a
buying power, but their voiceis loud enough to where the team
can then fall back on that andsay, like you said, there's less
risk because the public hassanctioned this pick.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, because I mean, at the end of the day, the
ownership of whatever teamyou're following, they listen to
the fans to some degree,because Ticket sales and jersey
sales and all those things thatgo into it, the fans vote with
their pocketbook.
And if you pick anoverwhelmingly unpopular choice
and the fans stop showing up orbooing you as you go on the
field, the ownership hears thatright to some degree.
(23:04):
And Oftentimes if you have allthe talent the world and you're
just not winning games, you firethe coach if you have, if
you're outperforming your talent, but you just can't seem to get
the right talent in thebuilding, you fire the general
manager.
If you're just bad, you fire.
If you want right, you justfire all the humans that you can
find and then justquote-unquote, rebuild.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
I would love to watch a season just just one season
of NFL football when the entiredraft is run by fans.
That would be how interestingthat be.
You would obviously have lotsof die-hard football fans.
You know a lot about playersand follow careers and have some
(23:46):
great Knowledge.
And then you'd have people likeme who would pick based off of
eye color well, so thereactually is a an amateur
football league.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
I guess it's professional because they get
paid, but there's a footballleague where the fans decide.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Well, it's basically fantasy football, but I'd like
to see it roll out.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, no, but there isn't there there is a football
league where the fans choose theplace.
Where were their crowd sourcevoted on what play?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Exactly exactly, which is kind of interesting.
I think we fun.
It would end horribly for someteams, but it'd be fun but I
digress, so let's go back towhere we were.
I don't remember who are wetalking about?
Talking about.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
So Arch Manning does this research study after he
goes into teach Tiavana and I'mkidding.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
Oh, arch Manning.
So if we're gonna apply this tobusiness, which I think is
always our end goal, it'simportant to remember that.
Well, yes, it's really great toeliminate trivial decisions
Like what you're gonna wearevery day.
I know you are really good atthis.
You wear the same thing everysingle day.
You have like three coloreddifferent colors, three dark
(24:54):
colored variations of the sameshirt, so that's great.
I think that is a greatstrategy to clear your mind and
keep the clutter out so you canmake those really hard decisions
later.
But we're still finite.
So, in order to avoid moredecision fatigue or anything
that leads to paralysis, trustyour team, trust people you have
(25:16):
around you.
If you don't have anyone aroundyou, find people.
They don't have to be employeesor business partners or
investors.
They can be friends who youtrust are acumen.
They could be mentors.
They can be people on socialmedia that you follow, your
LinkedIn connections, et cetera.
But trust those people becausethere's a place for
(25:36):
crowdsourcing decisions.
If it can offload you and thatthe fatigue, do it just to go
back really quick and then handthis over back to you.
John Mary even said that for alot of her talks that she does
on this she will crowdsource thetitles of those talks.
I mean, she's the expert shecould title it.
Why she doesn't need to makethat decision.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, I think the next step would be okay.
So we're going to crowdsourcesome decisions.
How does that apply to limitingdecision fatigue?
Do we just crowdsourceeverything?
And I've broken down what Ithink are some great ways of
limiting decision fatigue andprioritizing decisions.
(26:19):
So, discipline and simplicity,embracing daily routines and
simplifying your life to focuson what truly matters.
Prioritize wisely.
Seek wisdom and prioritization,which you were just speaking of
.
Rest and renewal regularlyincorporating periods of rest
and spiritual renewal into yourschedule to refresh and renew
(26:41):
yourself, to have the clarity tomake some of those decisions.
Seek wisdom and counsel.
Make informed decisions byseeking wisdom, guidance and
counsel from advisors.
Embrace challenges with grace.
Face challenges and setbackswith grace and resilience,
trusting in a higher purpose andlearning from your failures.
And then, lastly, live withpurpose and service.
(27:03):
Lead by example, serving otherswith humility and purpose to
help make your decision making.
It more about the purpose thatyou have for your life and less
about just trying to navigatethrough it.
And I think you touched onprioritizing wisely.
Crowdsourcing falls into that.
But let's talk rest and renewal.
I think in your you have atendency to get really into the
(27:30):
weeds of the details of things.
You like to be involved.
You like to know what's goingon, you like to organize things
and I've seen you in the pastget almost overwhelmed by those
things and you don't take thetime for rest and renewal.
And I know that recently youbrought in a, like an assistant,
to organize your calendar andhelp you to understand what kind
(27:51):
of time you have in the day toprioritize some tasks, and I
know that when we've discussedit, you've brought in rest and
renewal.
So what does that look like?
And tell everyone what I justsaid.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
There's two parts, the first being when it comes to
the tools I use, understandingthat I have limitations when it
comes to switching tasks.
So I work from home, fulldisclosure.
I work from home uh, fullyremote, and I'm a mother, as you
know.
Um, surprise, um, I'm a motherand I have I have side gigs like
(28:28):
this, and I'm a writer.
So there's a lot, there's a lotgoing on and I don't task
switch.
Well, what that means is like,when I'm in mom mode, I don't.
I'm not thinking about thispodcast.
When I'm working in my nine tofive, I'm not thinking about the
fact that you asked me to waterthe plants on my lunch break.
It's really hard for me to takeeverything that requires my
(28:52):
attention in the course of a dayand blend it.
I'm very compartmentalized whenit comes to the tasks I have to
get done.
So this tool that I'veincorporated, which is a
calendar management system Ithink it's okay to drop them on
this, right, it's motion, um,and it integrates with all of my
calendars and it helps meprioritize so I can set
deadlines on things.
(29:12):
So if you tell me at nine am,hey, I need you to water the
plants, I can plug into motion.
I need to water the plants.
Today.
It's really high priority, thehealth of my marriage is
depending on this and it'll plugit in where I have free time in
between meetings.
You know, maybe on my lunchbreak, everything is in there
from, like I said, all mymeetings, all the tasks I had to
(29:33):
get done for work, when I'mpicking up the girls from school
, when I need to start dinner,it's all plugged in, and so the
app will use AI, I guess, for,you know, lack of a better term
to plug in all those tasksthroughout the day.
So as I'm working, it'll justtell me oh, you have a little
break, go water those plants.
So that's been how I've beenbeing more efficient with my
(29:54):
task switching and then theother um, you know, back to the
whole point of this segment,which is rest and renewal.
Um, something that I haveverbalized to you is I can't do
everything.
I think there's.
I think there's.
This is a lie.
This is my personal opinionthat that you know you can do it
all.
I think it's a lie.
I think it's very dangerous tothink that you know you can't,
(30:17):
you can't have it all.
Um, particularly from myposition as a woman and a mother
, this idea of you know youcan't have it all.
You can have a career and youcan, you know, be a really
attentive parent and all this?
I don't.
I don't think that's true, Idon't think it's fair to put
that on people, especially women, but I think it applies to all
(30:37):
people.
I don't care what gender youare, I don't care what race you
are, I don't care where you work.
If you're home, you can't haveit all.
There's your finite and there'sonly so many hours in the day
and so communicating to you, umand to everyone, like I have
limited resources, I have to beable to let things fall off, you
know, not get to certain things.
(30:58):
And prioritizing my, my task,switching, has helped because I
can say this is more highpriority, it's okay if I don't
get to that, giving myself grace.
You know, like you said, I getin the weeds, being able to pull
myself back out and say it'sokay if I don't get to that,
because I do need to let my hairdown, decompress, read, et
cetera.
(31:18):
So I think, coming to gripswith the fact that we've been
said this idea that we can haveit all, we can do it all.
We're not robots.
We have tools that can help usget close to getting everything
checked off our list, but it'simportant to let things.
Let things be.
There's a season for everything.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, and I think so.
You actually touched on a fewthings there.
Um, you touched.
You touched on embracingchallenges, of grace, right
being being okay, no-transcript.
The idea of and I think I saidthis last week as well is that
failure isn't fatal and successisn't final, and knowing that
(31:58):
you can fail at something or notcomplete a task, and that's
okay.
And I think when you go intolive with purpose and service,
there's a well right you broughtup a few times where there are
things that are important to you.
Right, water in the plantsisn't one of them.
Nope, obviously, my pork plants.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
They have survived.
I want the record to show Ourlove for and is okay.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
But I think living with purpose and I think that's
one of the things that on myside of it I think I do really
well at there's a lot of areas Istruggle, but I think, with
keeping in mind what's importantin life and just letting the
rest fall.
A long time ago, somebody kindof taught me the do delay, oh
(32:41):
yes, delete.
I think it is do delay, delete.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Do delay delegate?
Ah, delete, delete.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Do, delay, delegate, delete.
I think I'm really really goodat do, delay and delete, but
sometimes when I get to delegate, I have a hard time kind of
pushing that off, and so on myside of it that's where Seek
Wisdom and Council comes intoplay, where I have a lot of
mentors that are helping me makesome of the decisions in my
(33:08):
life and recently, as I've madebig decisions that I think are
very important.
I now have a group of men thatI call and we talk through what
I'm looking at where it is, andthese are people that I respect
and people who value the samethings I do family-wise and
career-wise, and I value theiropinions and so bringing those
(33:31):
pieces and parts intodecision-making.
Now, you're never going tocompletely remove decision
fatigue it's just not gonnahappen but you can dramatically
shift that opinion on it, right,and I think next week we're
gonna talk a little bit withJohn Jeremillo specifically
about you can't do it all,because when you go on Instagram
(33:52):
or the dopamine hit of socialmedia period, when you go on
these places, there's so many ofthese little gurus that are
online telling you how to liveyour best life and how to
succeed in business, and yougotta grind and you gotta get up
at 4 am and all these thingsthere's all these people telling
you these things and all thatkind of can result in is burnout
(34:13):
, because you don't see themwhen they're down, you only see
them when they're up, andthey're always up.
And so if you feel there's anexpectation where you are
staying always up, that's whereJohn Jeremillo and I are gonna
have that conversation of youcan't do it all.
How do we address that?
So tune in next week for that.
Outside of that, you gotta befinal thoughts as far as
(34:33):
decision fatigue that you'd liketo leave the people of the
podcast.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
The people of the IT hours we need.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Oh, we do.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
We do need a fan name .
We'll get, we'll workshop that.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Etoes.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I wanna put it on motion Schedules a brain
storming sesh Etoes, etoes,etoes.
Oh boy.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
All right, not Etoes, not Etoes.
Vote on Instagram.
We'll put it out to Instagram.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Love that idea.
We'll crowdsource it.
We don't need to come up withit.
I think usually fans come upwith their own names anyway.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
You know, we can just wait for them to do it
themselves.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
We have like 10 fans, so we'll just come and call
after the show.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
Yeah, we'll just send out an email to each and every
listener.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
It can be a text message.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
This could have been an email.
Thank you so much for joiningus, as always, and this is the
Innovate Everything podcast,where we unpack and explore
innovation as innovators.
See you next week.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Bye.
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