Decision Heuristics for a World of Infinite Choice
Automate trivial decisions so you keep energy for the ones that matter
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 82%
Bhogal frames modern life as an age of abundance where everything competes for attention by offering more choice, so the scarce skill is deciding fast. Most decisions are trivial (what to eat, which toothpaste) yet exert a compounding time and energy cost. His toolkit: when you can't decide, the answer is no (bias toward denying rather than approving, or you'll be led astray); prefer the option more painful in the short term, since we over-avoid near-term pain; and turn repeated choices into routine, as Jobs, Obama and Zuckerberg did with clothing. Williamson adds Tony Robbins' reframe that you haven't decided until you take an action moving you toward it, which neuters the 'anxiety cost' of open loops. The payoff: less time deciding means more time making whatever you chose actually work.
Origin
Drawn from Gurwinder Bhogal's writing on decision-making heuristics (published on his Substack) and framed around 'Franklin's paradox' — that we spend the most time on the decisions that matter least — discussed with Chris Williamson on Modern Wisdom.
Core principles
- 01Every trivial decision spends time AND energy, even when the outcome barely matters
- 02In an age of infinite choice, defaulting to 'no' protects your time
- 03A decision isn't made until you take an action in the world toward it
- 04Routine converts a repeated decision into zero-cost habit
- 05The less time you spend making a decision, the more time you have to make the decision work
How to run it
- 1
See the hidden cost of trivial decisions
Recognise that small choices don't just cost time, they cost energy and create fatigue. Making hundreds of them a day wears you down without you noticing.
Pro tip Catch yourself mid-vacillation, like standing in a supermarket comparing near-identical yogurts, and name it as wasted time.
- 2
Default to 'no' when you can't decide
As a last resort, if you genuinely can't choose, the answer is no. Because we're flooded with requests, erring toward denial protects the time to do what you actually want.
Watch out Saying yes to every request from friends and colleagues leads you astray and leaves nothing for your own priorities.
- 3
Choose the short-term painful option
When options are close, pick the one that hurts more now. We have a strong bias to avoid near-term pain and defer it to a future that feels far away and therefore cheap.
- 4
Convert repeated decisions into routine
For choices you don't truly care about, adopt a fixed pattern, a work 'uniform' or a set weekly meal rota, to eliminate the decision entirely.
Pro tip Add just enough variety that you don't get bored, but not so much that you have to choose fresh every day.
- 5
Raise the bar for what counts as 'deciding'
You haven't decided to start a business or change a habit until you take a real action toward it. Treating the first action as the definition of a decision stops wallowing.
Pro tip Use the first small action as the lead measure; the internal 'commitment' alone doesn't count.
- 6
Set cut-off points to stop obsessing
Decide in advance when to stop, e.g. 'find this one fact online, then cut the internet and start writing,' or only open your phone with a specific thing you want to see.
Pro tip Give yourself a deliberate reason before opening a feed, then close it once you've seen that thing.
In the wild
Williamson recalls standing in a supermarket in Gosforth vacillating for two full minutes between a store brand and a 'finest' range of yogurts over a difference of about fifty pence. He 'came out of the fever dream' and realised if anything was wasting time, this was, since the choice would never affect his life, but the energy-sapping nature of tiny pointless decisions would.
→ Illustrates decision fatigue: the cost isn't the yogurt, it's the drip-drip erosion of energy from meaningless choices.
Bhogal notes Steve Jobs, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly wore essentially one outfit, choosing a single look and repeating variations of it. By turning dress into routine they eliminated the cost of a decision they didn't care about, freeing cognitive resources for running a company or a country.
→ Turning a recurring decision into a routine removes it as a daily drain entirely.
Williamson describes a Tony Robbins workbook that unstuck decisions he'd vacillated over for ages, on the rule that you haven't made a decision until you've taken an action in the world that moves you toward it. Reframing the first action as the decision itself raised the bar for commitment and 'neutered the anxiety cost' of unresolved loops.
→ Long-stalled decisions resolved once 'deciding' was redefined as taking a concrete first step.
Common mistakes
Treating all decisions as equal effort
Because trivial choices sap so much energy, the genuinely important decisions get 'lumped into the same category' of banal to-do-list effort and never get the deliberation they deserve.
Leaving decisions open instead of closing them
Delaying a decision lets problems grow, e.g. a late email now needs an added apology, so the longer you defer, the higher the eventual cost.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone flooded with daily micro-decisions who feels decision fatigue and wants to reclaim attention for high-stakes calls.
Not ideal for
The small set of genuinely irreversible, high-consequence decisions (marriage, career, major investments) that deserve real deliberation.
From the transcript
“if you can't decide, the answer is no”
“you cannot say that you have made a decision until you have taken an action in the world that moves yourself toward it”
“the less time you spend making decisions, the more time you spend making decisions work”
From the episode
14 Uncomfortable Truths About Human Psychology - Gurwinder Bhogal - #805
Gurwinder Bhogal