Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel Page 0,34
Wardrobe.” All do their job by limiting your choices so your brain space can be allocated for other things.
Adopt a Signature Look
Just like a signature dish, one fancy outfit can fulfill a multiplicity of roles.
When Will and I got married, I found a little black dress for our rehearsal dinner on the sale rack at Ann Taylor: raw silk, thin straps, A-line to just below the knee. In other words, it’s incredibly versatile and appropriate for countless occasions. I used to wonder if it was okay to wear the same dress again, but I decided a decade ago to just go with it. We recently celebrated our nineteenth anniversary, so this dress has been to a hundred weddings and cocktail parties by now.
It’s still timeless and still looking good—and until it finally wears out, I’m going to keep wearing it everywhere.
Limit Yourself to One Source
We all have decisions we can’t automate because they just don’t come up that often. For example, in recent months I’ve needed to choose new storage bins for my pantry, find a new kennel for my dog, Daisy, and hire a speaker for a community event. Because I’m not accustomed to making them, these decisions, while infrequent, can eat up vast amounts of mental energy. I don’t do any of these things regularly, so I’m a novice. And because I like to learn new things, I can needlessly overinvestigate my options in any new-to-me situation.
That’s why, when facing decisions like these—ones I’ve never made before and may never make again—I’ve decided in advance to proactively limit my options. One of my preferred ways to do that is by limiting myself to just one source. I established this personal policy a few years ago, after I learned my lesson shopping for new bedding. Since I’m not fond of shopping, I’d postponed the decision for too long and finally reached the point where I needed to buy some—and fast. When I started looking online, I was quickly overwhelmed by the choices. I needed enough options, not infinite ones!
I explained my predicament to my interior-decorator friend and asked her to tell me just one store where I could find what I was looking for. She obliged (her answer: Pottery Barn), which brought my limitless options back into the reasonable range. She gave me a further head start by highlighting a few duvets she thought would look good in my bedroom. With drastically reduced options, it took me five minutes to decide. Not hours.
Now, whenever the countless options feel overwhelming, I look for a way to quickly narrow my options. Not sure what to read next? Try limiting yourself to the books already on your shelf or those available right now at your regular library branch. Need a birthday gift? Try limiting yourself to just one store (or even just one category, like journals). Not sure what to plant in this year’s herb garden? You guessed it: instead of driving all over town to see what’s available, resolve to plant only what you can find at one local nursery.
Limit Yourself to One Time
If you find yourself constantly thinking about how to fit something into your schedule or when to fit it in, limiting your options by establishing a set time can help. Committing to a set time is hard for some of us (me included), but once that time is set, you don’t have to think about it anymore. If you decide to work out every other morning at 8:00 a.m., you’ll no longer worry about when to squeeze in a workout. If you decide to walk the dog in the hour before dinner, you’ll no longer wonder when a good time might be. If you decide Thursday is grocery day, you won’t waste mental energy deciding when to run to the store.
If it doesn’t work to commit to a set time or you’d prefer not to, you could implement if-then rules to make sure the things you want to do get done without your having to think about them. This strategy works because it anchors a new behavior—one you have to think about—into an existing routine. Over time, your routine expands to accommodate the new behavior. For instance, now if I drink a cup of coffee, I also pour a glass of water. If I heat up food in the microwave, I do a plank until the timer dings. If I brush my teeth, I take two extra minutes and do my stretches. Decide once, and you can repeat