Next, decrease your range of options. This may seem counterintuitive, since it requires making even more decisions. For instance, if you’re picking a restaurant for an important lunch meeting, first deciding on a certain part of town or type of cuisine can narrow your options. Like the participants in the jams study, you’re less likely to be paralyzed by choice if you have few options instead of dozens.
Once you’ve arrived at a decision, stick with it. Ignore the naysaying voice in your head asking if this is the mutual fund that will make you the most money in 15 years or if the route your GPS gave you is the most gas-efficient. Just accept that no decision is ever completely perfect, and remind yourself that it is the best you can do with the tools you have in the moment. Second-guessing yourself only requires making more decisions, which further depletes your cognitive resources. You might also end up happier; researchers have found that people who “satisfice, “or pick an option that meets requirements, are more content with their choices than people who try to pick the best option.
Changing your beliefs may actually make you more productive, too. Someresearchers believe that the notion of ego depletion is all in your head, and that rejecting the idea of self-control as a muscle can combat its effects. People who instead believe that self-control is an infinite resource are less likely to show effects of ego depletion—they actually show increased performance on self-control tests after completing boring, ego-draining tasks like crossing out e’s from a document. Even weirder, how you feel about free will also affects your productivity: The more strongly you believe in it, the more likely you are to enjoy making decisions and to be happy with your choices. My apologies, readers, but your best bet at boosting your productivity may actually be to disregard what you’ve learned in this article.
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