A Simple Life

The direction of life I’ve been pursuing lately is simplicity. You could also call it minimizing decision-making. I try to keep my daily routine without overthinking it. I wake up at 7 AM, and at 7:30 I speak in English for about 30 minutes. I head straight to the office, writing in my journal on the subway. I eat a light packed lunch box for breakfast and start work. During lunch break, I go exercise. I try to keep a similar routine on weekends as well.

I also keep a simple workflow when working at the office. When I start work in the morning, I write down the tasks and priorities for the day, and carry them out in order. I try as much as possible not to think, “So what should I do now?”

As the decisions I need to make at work have become more complex and difficult, I’ve come to focus even more on simplifying my life. It’s said that the cognitive energy a person can use for decision-making in a day is limited. It’s like MP in an RPG game—every time you make a decision, the energy starts to drain little by little. And once the energy is depleted, you end up in a mental state only capable of repeating simple tasks.

That rings true. As the decisions I need to make at work have become more complex and difficult, I feel even more keenly how limited that energy is. There are many times when I have the time but not the decision-making energy. To make high-quality decisions at work, I need to use my decision-making energy efficiently. And for that, my life needs to be simple when I’m not working.

It’s also necessary to pursue a simple life in order to secure time to solve important problems. If you keep agonizing every 10 minutes over “So what should I do now?” or “Should I go work out today or not?”, time slips away before you know it. Often, you end up spending both time and energy just deliberating. In that case, it’s better to “just do what’s already decided.”