Make the Decision Once
- Adam R.
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
What am I going to eat for lunch?
When am I going to train today?
Should I go for my walk now or later?
Do I have time to meal prep tonight?
Maybe I'll just do it tomorrow.
None of these decisions seem particularly difficult on their own.
But when a behavior you're trying to make consistent requires you to renegotiate it every single day, you're creating unnecessary friction.
And every new decision creates another opportunity to make a different one.
Sometimes the easiest way to become more consistent isn't to become more disciplined.
It's to make fewer decisions.
Make the Decision Before You Need to Make the Decision
My life is pretty automated at this point.
Take my nutrition.
I'm currently in contest prep, and if you opened my refrigerator or pantry, you wouldn't find many exciting options.
You'd find what I eat.
That's basically it.
I have my breakfast foods. My lunches. My snack. My dinner.
There isn't much in my house that doesn't fit the plan because I made those decisions before I got hungry.
Lunch comes around and I don't have to ask:
What sounds good right now?
The answer is already there.
The same thing happens with training.
Training isn't really a decision anymore.
I don't wake up and ask myself whether I feel like going to the gym.
It's something I do.
I approach work similarly. I plan my days ahead of time so I already know what needs my attention.
The decision is made long before the moment arrives.
Behavioral researchers sometimes refer to one version of this as an implementation intention: deciding in advance when, where, or under what circumstances you'll perform a behavior. Research has found that these kinds of plans can meaningfully improve the likelihood of following through on our goals.
Instead of:
“I'm going to train more this week.”
It becomes:
“I train Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 6.”
Instead of:
“I'm going to eat better tomorrow.”
It's:
“This is what I eat for lunch.”
There's nothing particularly exciting about that.
The boring works.
Stop Making the Same Decision Every Day
I see this with clients all the time.
Interestingly, training usually isn't the problem.
They'll make it to the gym.
Nutrition is where things become difficult.
What am I eating today?
Do I have enough protein?
Did I meal prep?
What am I doing for dinner?
Then the weekend arrives, the structure of the workweek disappears, and suddenly they're trying to make all of those decisions in real time.
This is where people often talk about decision fatigue.
The popular explanation is that we have some fixed supply of willpower every morning and every decision slowly drains the battery.
The science isn't nearly that simple.
But I think there's still a useful practical lesson here:
Why create another decision when you don't need one?
If the behavior matters, create a default.
Research on defaults shows that what is preselected or established as the normal option can meaningfully influence subsequent choices. Habit research similarly suggests that repeating behaviors in stable contexts can help those behaviors become more automatic over time.
In everyday terms:
Make the right thing the normal thing.
If lunch is usually chicken and rice, have chicken and rice available.
If you train at 6:00, block 6:00.
If you walk after dinner, dinner becomes the cue for the walk.
You're reducing the number of opportunities to negotiate with yourself.
One Disruption Can Create Five More Decisions
There's another cost to poor planning that we don't always consider.
Decisions create downstream decisions.
Let's use my diet.
Suppose I'm supposed to have chicken and rice for lunch, but I didn't prepare it.
I have ground beef and sweet potatoes available instead.
No big deal, right?
Except the ground beef contains more fat than the chicken.
Now the rest of the day needs adjusting.
Maybe the salmon I planned for dinner needs to become cod or haddock because they're leaner.
Maybe something else needs to change to make the day's nutrition work.
I can solve all of that.
But look at what happened.
One missing meal created three or four additional decisions.
That's bandwidth I didn't need to spend.
Now multiply that across your entire life.
Your food.
Training.
Work.
Sleep.
Appointments.
Family.
Errands.
The more mundane decisions you can make ahead of time, the more bandwidth you preserve for the decisions that actually require your attention.
The goal isn't to remove thought from your life. It's to stop wasting thought where you don't need it.
Discipline Creates Freedom
Jocko Willink has a phrase I've always liked:
“Discipline equals Freedom.”
I think people sometimes hear discipline and imagine restriction.
I see it differently.
Structure can actually create freedom.
If I've already decided what I'm eating, when I'm training, and what needs to get done that day, I don't need to spend the day figuring those things out.
My bandwidth gets larger.
The structure handles the predictable things so I can think about the unpredictable ones.
That's what good planning should do.
But there's one more part of planning that I think gets overlooked.
Don't only plan for how the system succeeds.
Plan for how it could fail.
Build the Boat Before You Put It in the Water
Imagine you're building a boat.
Your goal isn't simply to make something that looks like a boat.
Eventually, you're going to put this thing in the water.
So before you do, you start looking for leaks.
Where could water get in?
What happens if this piece fails?
What needs reinforcement?
Where are the weak points?
You try to find the problems before the water finds them for you.
I think we should build our habits the same way.
You want to follow your nutrition plan?
Great.
How could that system fail?
What happens if you don't meal prep Sunday?
What happens when work runs late?
What happens when you run out of your normal lunch?
What happens on the weekend when your normal schedule disappears?
What happens when you're traveling?
Now build safeguards.
Keep an easy protein source available.
Have a backup meal.
Know what you'll order at the restaurant.
Prep an extra serving.
Create a weekend structure instead of assuming you'll figure it out Saturday morning.
This is essentially playing devil's advocate with your own system.
Don't just ask, “How am I going to succeed?”
Ask:
“How is this likely to fail?”
Then start plugging the leaks.
Make the Decision Once
Consistency doesn't have to mean making the right decision fifty times every day.
Sometimes discipline is making the right decision once and creating an environment that keeps supporting it.
Decide when you train.
Decide what breakfast looks like.
Decide what your default lunch is.
Decide when you go to bed.
Decide what happens when the original plan isn't available.
Then repeat those behaviors long enough that they start becoming part of how you operate.
Will life occasionally force you to adjust?
Of course.
A good system isn't rigid.
But there's a difference between adjusting a plan because circumstances changed and reopening the plan because you don't feel like following it.
That's why the boring works.
The meals are already there.
The training is already scheduled.
The defaults are established.
The predictable points of failure have safeguards.
You aren't spending your entire day deciding whether you're going to follow through.
The decision was made before the day began.
If you know what you should be doing but still struggle to do it consistently, the problem may not be discipline. It may be the system surrounding the behavior.
That's the work I do through My Disciplined Mind: helping people identify what's getting in the way, build systems that work in their actual lives, and become less dependent on motivation to follow through.
If you're ready to stop starting over, learn more about coaching here.
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