We make choices all the time. Some choices are important – where you choose to live, work, etc. Other choices are extremely unimportant—what color of shirt to wear, your lunch, etc. Everything else is in between. I’m going to focus on the unimportant choices, where any level of thought beyond 5 minutes is just a time sink.

I noticed last year that I overthink about meaningless things.

I’m going to use email as my example—I’m sure many of you relate. Email is a huge time sink. In an average workplace, over 40 emails are sent per day and over 120 emails are read per day. There’s a huge deluge of email. It was overtaking my life and time.

Every email that I wrote took too much thought. I was spending an upward of 5 minutes on each email. I decided to make a change, and so I don’t doubt my first drafts. Now, I now only spend a minute per email.

  • Before, 5 min/email * 8 emails = 40 minutes of my day :(
  • After, 1 min/email * 8 emails = 8 minutes of my day :)

Moreover, reading emails and responding to them takes even more time. We receive onwards of 120 emails a day. Yet, people are often amazed by my response speed. Well, the truth is I have a system that expedites these choices. I only read emails, when I am walking, traveling, or in a passive moment. Roughly, 90% of emails are not responded to. For the rest, if they are unimportant, I respond while I walk. Only for the very important emails, I flag and respond to at my desk. These little acts don’t block me from real focused work, therby making me more productive and have more personal time.

I wonder how much wasted time that active thought on these little choices. Should I really be thinking about what I should wear, eat, and watch ? In these little micro decisions, I should just go with my first gut and just decide. My gut will typically make a good choice. I’ll look nice, eat well, and will be entertained, regardless of how much active thought I put. Now, they are times that you should care. A big date probably means wear something really nice; a great dinner at great restaurant means great anticipation, etc… However, in our daily lives, if we generally make good decisions, our gut is good enough.