Run a small business and you probably feel like you make dozens of decisions every day. Whether to cut a quality corner, or miss a ship date. Whether to respond to a customer complaint, or hope the problem goes away. Then there are the personal ones: whether to hit the snooze button, or keep grinding at the gym.
None of those are actually decisions, though — because you already know what you should do. Nearly everything you "decide" already has an answer. Quality problem? Fix it. Customer complaint? Respond.
The same is true for personal habits. That nine minutes of sleep you get after hitting the snooze button isn't restorative; you're better off just setting your alarm nine minutes later. The food you packed is an integral part of your healthy lifestyle; going out for lunch instead is almost never better for you.
That's the beauty of processes and routines. Rules aren't restrictive; they are liberating because they free you from having to make "decisions." Instead of wasting mental energy and willpower on "choosing," all you have to do is act.
As Jeff Bezos says, you don't get paid to make thousands of decisions every day. You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Bezos once wrote: "If I make three good decisions a day, that's enough. Warren Buffett says he's good if he makes three good decisions a year, and I really believe that."
Clearly, there's a huge difference between three per day and three per year, but it's easy to explain. Launching a startup from a blank slate requires making countless tactical decisions — branding, pricing, marketing — where everything is up in the air.
But once you've made a decision, you no longer have to "decide." Unless evidence proves you wrong, all you have to do is act. With time, the number of decisions you need to make every day should rapidly decline. This allows you to shift your mental energy from tactical to strategic: Whether to launch a new product line, or open a new location. Whether to take your life — health, education, relationships — in a new direction.
Making fewer decisions frees you up to think about the things that will make the biggest difference. Think of it that way, and you really don't need to make more than three good decisions a year — especially if those decisions help you build the life you really want to live.