Why Does Everything Feel Like a Decision?

The other day I caught myself standing in the kitchen trying to make one more tiny decision. It wasn’t an important one. Honestly, I can’t even remember what it was.

But I remember thinking…maybe mentally screaming…Why does it feel like I’ve been deciding things all day?!

It wasn’t one big decision that had exhausted me. It was dozens of little ones.

Do I answer that text now or later? Should I stop at Target while I’m already out? Chicken or salmon tonight? White sneakers or sandals? Should I order it from Amazon or just drive to the store?

None of those decisions are particularly hard, but together they create this constant hum in the background of my life... and my head!

I’ve seriously started wondering whether our brains were ever meant to make this many decisions. Not the big ones—the tiny ones. The constant ones. The ones that don’t seem important until there are what feels like hundreds of them.

Sometimes my brain is a browser with 97 browser tabs open. Each one is small enough to ignore on its own. But together, they’re absolutely exhausting.

And the funny thing is, I don’t always realize that’s what’s making me so tired. I’ll catch myself thinking, What’s wrong with me!? I haven’t even done that much today!

But maybe my brain has.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about that moment in my kitchen. The more I pay attention to it, the more I realize I've been telling myself a story:

If I’m this tired... I must be doing something wrong.

Maybe I’m not organized or disciplined enough. Maybe everyone else has figured out adulthood, and I’m just struggling more than I should.

And yet, I’m not convinced that’s true.

Maybe I’m not failing at adulthood…

but responding normally to a world that asks my brain to stay “on” almost all the time.

We're constantly accessible. Always deciding and comparing. Remembering things that used to live somewhere outside ourselves. Where? I don't know—but it wasn't in my head.

I'm starting to think we confuse accessibility with capacity.

Just because someone can reach me at any moment doesn’t mean my nervous system was designed to be available at every moment!

Writing Good Girl, Bad Mom taught me something that's quietly changed the way I think about women, overwhelm, and even myself.

One of the ideas I keep coming back to is this:

When we name the labor, we reduce the shame.

So many Mothers assume they're exhausted because something must be wrong with them. But what if that's not what's happening at all? What if they’re simply carrying work that has never been fully named—the planning, the remembering, the emotional labor, the invisible work of holding everyone and everything together.

The moment we give that work a name, something softens. Not because there’s suddenly less of it, but because we stop assuming our exhaustion is evidence that we’re somehow failing.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if the same thing is true of decision-making.

Maybe we haven’t fully named that labor either.

The more I’ve sat with that idea, the more I’ve realized this isn’t just about having a lot of decisions to make.

It’s about living in a world that quietly hands us more decisions every single day. I don’t think women before us lived with this same level of constant accessibility.

I’m certainly not saying life was easier for previous generations, of course it wasn’t. Every generation has carried its own challenges.

But I do think this one is different.

Our phones have quietly trained us to believe we should always be available. That there’s always one more thing we could answer, buy, remember, schedule, or decide.

Sometimes it's a text from school. Then an email. Then a reminder that I forgot to RSVP to something. Maybe a package notification pops up while I'm trying to answer a client. Before I know it, my brain has switched gears five different times before breakfast!

And none of those interruptions feel particularly significant on their own but together, they keep my brain from ever fully settling down.

No wonder I’m walking around feeling mentally crowded. And maybe that’s why I’ve been craving something I never used to think much about.

Less.

Not because I’ve become boring or stopped caring. But because every decision I don’t have to make leaves a little more room for the ones that actually matter.

And then something else hit me.

Maybe that's one of the reasons the Better Is Better Philosophy has become so important to me.

When I first started talking about it, I thought it was mostly about choosing progress over perfection on purpose. It’s about giving myself permission to let something be about twenty percent less perfect so I can keep it moving instead of getting stuck trying to make everything perfect.

I still believe that’s true.

But lately, I’ve realized there’s another layer to it.

Perhaps it isn’t just about lowering impossible standards, but about protecting my mental bandwidth. Because every time I choose “better” instead of chasing “best,” I’m not just saving time.

I’m buying back attention.

I’m buying back energy.

And I’m buying back a little more room in my brain for the decisions that actually deserve it. That’s why this philosophy has always felt so motivating to me.

It’s not just because I get to feel successful before I’ve reached the finish line. It’s because I stop spending so much of my life trying to earn that feeling in the first place!

I think that’s what I’ve really been craving all along.

Not a smaller life or a less ambitious one.

Just...

Less mental clutter. More room for what matters.

Before I let you go, can I leave you with one thought?

If you’ve been wondering why you feel so tired all the time, maybe start by asking yourself a different question.

Not...

“What’s wrong with me?”

But...

“What has my brain been carrying that I haven’t been counting?”

I have a feeling that question changes something. It certainly has for me.

So this week, instead of trying to clear every browser tab in your brain...

just close one.

Love,

D

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