Transcription
Something that has become a prevalent system in my life this year has been what I call defaults. A few months back, I made some podcast episodes around the mental load and life admin and becoming more disciplined. And it made me realize that a huge element to feeling more in control and staying on top of all the stuff in life that piles up has been this concept of defaults that I've been incorporating into my life.
Think of defaults as the go-to things that you can rely on that help with all of the overwhelming decisions that come up on the day-to-day. So, this is like deciding what to eat, what time you're going to wake up, what your morning routine is, when you're going to clean up your house, or when you're going to do the laundry, when you're going to stop working. All of these decisions require your active attention. And when you're making those decisions from scratch every single day, they create a level of mental noise that is really, you know, it's hard to ignore. It never fully dissipates.
What I've learned is that feeling overwhelmed is often less about your workload and more about your decision load. When everything requires an active choice and your active attention, even days where you don't have a lot going on feel much busier or more mentally overwhelming than they need to. And defaults ultimately are how I have learned to reduce that load. They're predecessions that I make one time so I don't have to keep making them over and over and over again every day.
So, examples of this would be like familiar meals. I have a couple of different grocery videos where I show what I'm eating and a lot of those meals are my like default meals. They are my reliable routine. So, like my morning routine and my evening routine. And yes, these routines change seasonally, but they're my default routines when I need to snap back into it or just get into the groove for the day. They're basic structures that keep my daily life moving without having to constantly negotiate with myself.
So, in this episode, I want to walk through first how defaults work and why they reduce mental clutter and how I use them in a practical way across my meals, in my routines, in my work, and everyday life.
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So when I'm talking about default, I'm not talking about habits in the self-improvement sense and I'm not talking about routines that exist to optimize your productivity. I am talking specifically about infrastructure in your daily life. Infrastructure is the set of systems that keep things running without requiring constant attention. You usually only notice infrastructure when it's broken. When infrastructure works properly, it's fading into the background and supporting everything else. And defaults function that same way in daily life.
So most people are not overwhelmed because they lack discipline or they lack ambition. We have talked about this before. They're overwhelmed because too much of their day requires or relies on active decision-making. And this is what leads to the buzzword of the year, which is decision fatigue. Every single choice that you're making requires some degree of attention. Every transition you make throughout the workday or when you're closing out your workday requires an element of negotiation. And over time that constant cognitive effort creates fatigue even when nothing particularly difficult is happening in your life.
Defaults reduce that effort by turning repeated decisions into pre-decisions. A default is something you have already decided in advance. It's what happens unless there is a reason for something else to happen. So instead of asking yourself what am I doing today? you follow a familiar structure that already works.
So an example of this, let's say you're at work, you don't have a lunch packed. Deciding what to eat for lunch, where you're going to go for lunch, uses the same cognitive resources as deciding how to respond to an email or how to structure your day. So if you're spending too many of your cognitive resources on low stakes decisions like what am I eating for lunch today there's left capacity left for you to focus for you to be creative and most importantly for you to regulate your emotions which is really important. So defaults are there to really protect that capacity and create a baseline so your brain can operate a little bit more efficiently throughout the day.
When your day has predictable elements to it, your nervous system does not have to stay on high alert. There's less internal scanning, less second-guessing, and less mental clutter. When I sort of put pen to paper on the idea of default, it really shown a light onto why I am such a routine oriented person because I'm already someone who is high anxiety. And so having the opportunity to like put together what my default day looks like and knowing that, you know, in the morning I'm waking up and I'm having what will likely be a default day just gives me such a sense of peace.
Another important aspect of defaults is that they reduce friction at transition points in your day. So, you know, beginning work, ending work, moving from one activity to another, deciding how to spend your free time can all feel heavy if you don't have a default for what you generally do on the day-to-day. Defaults ultimately smooth the transitions out because they remove uncertainty. So, when you know how your morning is usually going to start, you don't negotiate with yourself when you're going to wake up. When you know what dinner looks like on a week night, you don't have to stand in the kitchen trying to decide what you're going to make tonight. When you know when admin related to work gets handled, it doesn't linger in the background of your brain all day.
Defaults support consistency in a way that motivation cannot because motivation fluctuates. Your energy fluctuates, your attention span fluctuates. Defaults remain steady. They don't require you to feel inspired or disciplined. They exist as the path that you follow most of the time. And this is especially important during periods of stress or travel or emotional fatigue. I do have an episode on my travel menu and like things that I do when I'm traveling to maintain a sense of normaly. And I would consider all of those things to be defaults.
When your capacity is low, what defaults do is they help prevent your life from becoming super super chaotic. Think of it as a stabilizer. So even if everything else feels a little bit uncertain, the basics continue to function.
The last thing here I want to clarify before we get into the different elements of defaults is that defaults are not meant to be super rigid rules. They're meant to be flexible infrastructure. Okay, a default meal doesn't mean you're eating the same thing every single day. It means you have a small subset of meals that you return to regularly. A default routine doesn't mean that every single morning looks exactly identical and you're following like a militarized timed routine. It just means you have a rhythm that guides how you start your day. Defaults can be overridden anytime you want. They can be adjusted or changed. They can evolve. The value comes from having something that you can comfortably return to, not from enforcing perfection.
They reduce mental clutter because they limit the number of open loops that your brain has to track. So when something is, you know, quote unquote defaulted, it doesn't require active consideration. You don't need to remember it. You don't need to plan it. You don't need to decide to do it. It just frees up your attention. And what this has over time is a pretty serious compounding effect because you're making less decisions on the day-to-day. So, you're thinking a lot more clearly. Clearer thinking ultimately leads to better follow-through, building more self-trust. Life starts to feel a little bit more manageable. And it's not because you're doing less, but because fewer things are demanding your attention all at the same time.
When I started thinking of defaults, specifically in this way as infrastructure instead of the constant hamster wheel of self-improvement, my relationship with my systems and my relationship with my routines have really started to change because I'm no longer trying to optimize everything. I'm focused on just making my daily life a little bit easier. And this is what makes the concept of having some defaults really powerful.
Now, we're going to jump into some of the default pillars, we'll call them. So, like meals, routines, all that kind of stuff. And we're going to start off with default meals because this is generally the first place that I like to start when I'm trying to reduce mental clutter because food decisions and what I'm eating throughout the day show up every single day and it's never going to stop because obviously every day you got to eat. You have to decide what you're going to eat multiple times a day. Whether you're busy, whether you're rested, whether you're motivated, whether you're tired, whether you're home, whether you're traveling, whether you have stuff going on or you don't.
When there's no structure around food, those decisions drain your energy. And as a result, so many things happen. You end up spending money you didn't need to spend. You end up overshopping at the grocery store. You end up ordering takeout. You end up wasting food. You end up eating unhealthy. Like there's so many elements to this that can cause parts of your life to feel out of control. So default meals are like the cornerstone of getting organized or feeling organized. And again, a default meal is not about restriction. It's not about eating the same thing all the time. It's about having a short list of meals that you already know work for you. They're meals you like. They're meals you can prepare without too much thought. They're meals where you usually have all of the ingredients on hand already and they fit into your actual schedule.
So for me, default meals exist in categories of meals. So like breakfast, lunches, and dinners. Usually I already have a meal plan in advance, and I have a few videos about this, so I'll make sure one of them is linked on the screen if you are watching here on YouTube. Um, but I'm not perfect obviously and sometimes I just have to figure something out from scratch in the moment. So when I'm in this situation and I'm hungry, I'm trying to not decide from scratch. I then choose from a familiar set of options that I have a tendency to, you guessed it, default to, are you seeing where we're going here? Usually for me, this is like a baked tofu stir fry vegetable and rice bowl or I'll do a tofu scramble and some avocado toast because I always have that. I always have bread in the freezer if I don't have fresh bread. It could be something from my freezer because whenever I make a chili or a pot of beans or a soup, I always freeze a portion so that when I'm in these kinds of situations, I have something that I can easily grab.
Having defaults like this matters so much because hunger and decision-making do not pair well together. We've all experienced this. If you know, you know. I am somebody who gets hangry and I am not nice when I'm hungry. So, if you wait until you are tired or hungry to decide what to eat, everything feels harder. It's a familiar experience. I know we have all had it.
So, default meals too also simplify your grocery shopping. So when you know what you usually eat, your grocery list becomes a lot more predictable. You stop wandering around the store deciding what sounds good to you in that moment and you can go with your list. You have the same ingredients that you get on a regular basis and it just becomes faster and less mentally taxing.
What I do want to emphasize here is that again this doesn't mean you're eating the same things every week. For example, even if I'm experimenting with a couple new recipes, if I'm going for my weekly grocery shop, I am always buying broccoli, zucchini, avocados, a couple blocks of tofu, a few different cans of beans. Like, I'm bananas, avocados, garlic, and onions. Like, those are things that I always have in my space because I know I can make meals from those things if I'm in a pinch or I don't have a plan. and I know they're ingredients that pair well together or pair well with things that I likely already have in my pantry. It just makes the process of going through the store feel a lot easier.
Another benefit of default meals is that they create consistency during seasons of your life that feel really busy or maybe extra stressful. So like if you're going through a busy time at work, the last thing you want to think about is your meal plan and figuring out what you're eating for dinner. So defaults can help keep you fed without requiring too much extra effort. You don't have to get super creative every night and you can rely on what already works. Honestly, this applies at any point in time. Like if I have a busy day and I'm tired and all I want to do is sit down and watch my show, the very last thing I want to do is pull out a cookbook and make a recipe. Like I just don't want to do it. So, if I know that I can just throw rice on the stove and slice up some tofu and stick it in the oven and chop up some veg, usually I pre-chop my veg and toss it in a pan with a little bit of Japanese barbecue sauce. I know I'm going to be able to pull that all together and it's going to be good. It's going to be filling and it's super healthy.
So, the key is that default meals need to be realistic. If you can hear the alarm in the background, I am so sorry. We're going to keep rolling with this. If a meal requires a lot of prep or a lot of motivation, it will not function as a default. So, think of default meals as easy to execute even on low energy days. Over time, these will reduce the most persistent source of daily decision fatigue, which is what you are eating every day.
So, if you are someone who already has some default meals, leave a comment either on YouTube or on Spotify because I know for a fact there are going to be people who are looking through these comments looking for more ideas for default meals, especially if you're not vegetarian cuz again, I'm vegetarian. So, you know, if you don't like tofu or whatever, obviously my ideas for default meals are may not be appealing to you. So, if you have a default meal that you enjoy, leave it in the comments.
Moving on, let's get into default routines. One of my favorite things to talk about, default routines work in a very similar way as default meals. They remove the repeated decisions around how your day flows. And I feel like I've really got this down, but think about when you're when you don't have default in your day-to-day workflow, every transition between calls and projects and tasks and work becomes a question. It's like how should I start my workday today? Should I check my emails? Am I getting on the phone? Like there's so many elements to it that can again it leads to decision fatigue. And then ultimately what ends up happening is you're not actually locked in on work. You're thinking about all the other things that you have to do and what you're actually doing is not consciously registering.
So, a default routine is just the way you usually do things that help set your day up for success. It's the familiar rhythm your body and your mind recognize and it's the routine that your life can fall into when things feel overwhelming. So, I like to think of my default routines as like old reliable. Like these are the things that I know are going to ease my brain, help me lock in, stay calm, and get focused for the day.
So, for example, a default morning routine doesn't need to be so endlessly elaborate or include every single healthy habit you could ever aspire to. It needs to be something that you can just follow consistently. So when you wake up, you move through the same couple of steps in roughly the same order. And what this does is it removes the negotiation before the day even begins. Like if you are in a consistent, you know, schedule of you wake up and you go to a class or you wake up and you go on a walk or you wake up and you make your coffee. If you try to change that, what ends up happening is when your alarm goes off, you're laying in bed and you're like, am I doing my workout today? Do I want to get up right now? you're already starting the day off with that internal negotiation.
So for me, my mornings, they do change seasonally, but in the winter season, this is something that I've discussed. What this looks like for me is I wake up at the same time every day. I get up around 6:40. I make my coffee. I make my bed. I do my skin care. I give myself like 20 to 30 minutes to sort of wake up. Sometimes I read, sometimes I do my needle pointing, and then I start my workday.
The same applies to work. The default way you start your workday reduces resistance when you're logging in because sometimes we can feel a little bit of internal pressure or internal resistance when it's time to start working. You know, when you're going to check your email, when you're going to focus, when you're going to take breaks to the best of your ability. For me, this looks like when I sit down on my desk, I go through kind of like a rhythm. I'll read my passage in the daily stoic. I will very quickly scan my email, check my notifications just to see if there is anything that requires urgent attention. Usually, I don't respond to emails right away, but I like to just double check in case there is anything. And then I get into one hour of focused, deep work.
Evening routines are also just as important as your morning routine. that somehow they always get overlooked. A default wind-down helps your brain transition out of work mode. This is called a shutdown routine. I do recommend that at the end of every day, you like shut down your workday and you check off the things that you did and you plan out for the next day. That's like a really important default routine. So again, when you're sitting at your desk the next morning, you're not like, "What am I doing today? What do I need to do today?" You've kind of already thought through it.
Work tends to bleed into rest if your evenings are not structured. So, defaults help create a very clear end point. So, for me, this includes my shutdown routine, which I've showed in prior day in my life vlogs. And then I will do some sort of workout. Particularly in the winter, I tend to work out in the evenings. I'll come back, I'll shower, I'll do my skin care, I'll make my dinner, and then I will do some sort of offline hobby. So, needle pointing, reading, etc.
What makes routines effective is simplicity. So, if you're trying to boil the ocean with all of your routines, what will end up happening is after a couple of days, they'll break down because you're going to get burned out. So, consistency matters more than having some big elaborate routine. And what happens is over time, these small default routines create a rhythm in your day-to-day and you start to feel a lot steadier because you're not making decisions that are competing for your attention all day long. I do have a very detailed breakdown of all of my routines. It's episode 129 if you are interested in checking that out.
Moving on, let's talk defaults for work and life admin, which I kind of talked about just now, but work and life admin are major sources of background stress because they tend to exist sort of like everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. It's emails, it's scheduling, it's errands, it's planning, it's maintenance tasks. They float around mentally when they don't have a clear structure. We have also talked about this in my overwhelm episode. What happens is defaults give these tasks containment. I'm not going to spend too much time about this on this again because I do have a full episode on it, but just from a high level, a default time for admin means you're not thinking about it all day long. It could be 30 minutes in the beginning or end of your day, but you know when you're actually going to handle it.
So for me, I always dedicate about 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening for emails. And if I don't have that as something that I'm mentally doing, then I'm always checking my email all day long. And that is not good for staying in the zone, especially with focused work. The same applies to, you know, all of the different mental processes. So email, how you process email to prevent constant checking. Um, planning, mapping out your day. I have a default weekly planning session that I do now on Sundays. And what I do is I map out high-level what needs to be accomplished throughout the week. So I do my top three most important tasks. I'll brain dump my to-do list. And then I will plan out, you know, the theme of tasks that I'm going to be doing day after day after day depending on my workout schedule and any events or any meetings or anything specific that I have going on throughout the week. So, you know, this is a weekly reset. I take time to review my calendar. I have part of this is booking my workout classes for the week.
When these things start happening automatically, they stop occupying all of your mental space. So, for me, 20 minutes on a Sunday night gives me hours of my life back during the week. It's 110% worth it. I've become such a Sunday, not a Sunday reset gal, but like a Sunday getting organized, dedicating an hour to just getting it all done. And especially too, if you put like a container around how long you're going to do it, it doesn't feel like an all-day overwhelming affair.
At work, defaults could look like standard work blocks. So, I know if you work a traditional job, you may not have a ton of control over your schedule every single day. However, something that you should attempt to do if possible, I always hate to say you should do this because everybody's job is different, but what I used to do was I would block focus times on my calendar where people couldn't book meetings over it so that I wasn't constantly being interrupted by meetings. I don't know if this is something that you struggle with, so let me know. But I always have a hard time if I have like at noon I have a 12 or at noon I have a 30-minute meeting and then I have 30 minutes off and then at 1 I have a 30-minute meeting and then I have 30 minutes off. That just breaks up my day in a way where I can never get into a flow. So I would always try to schedule meetings either back-to-back or all on the same two days and then have another day where I don't take meetings or I have a large chunk of time with no meetings so that I could actually get things done. Now that I control my schedule, I really only take calls on Mondays and Tuesdays and I do my best to keep my Wednesdays through Fridays open for more project momentum-based work.
It could also be having recurring meetings. So if you have a lot of the same meetings, they could be the same time every single week because predictability like this helps reduce stress because again your brain knows what to expect. So don't think of default as making your life rigid. Think of them as a tool that can make your life manageable so that admin tasks and workflow tasks and random stuff that can be hanging over you or weighing on you doesn't leak into everything else that you're doing.
So now let's pivot a little bit into how to build and maintain some defaults. So defaults work best in my opinion when you start small. You don't need to have defaults for every single pillar of your life. I would really focus on one area that feels like it's either draining your attention or really sucking your energy. So, this could be your weekly meals, your mornings, your work structure. Those are great common entry points. So, build defaults around your real-life problems. And try not to idealize what you want your life to look like look like. Like think about what your life actually looks like now. Because if you try to be too perfect, what's going to end up happening is it's not going to hold in place.
Once you have a default in place, you want to start drawing attention to how your day feels and if you notice a shift. If you're feeling that something creates more resistance than it does more ease, then you need to simplify it. Because truly the point of default is to make your life feel easier, not harder. So if you're trying to overcomplicate something, then obviously that's not going to be a sustainable habit.
When you think about maintenance, maintenance is pretty easy when your systems are realistic. So, for example, when I'm thinking about my financial maintenance, I use the personal finance dashboard and I track my expenses weekly. And usually when I say that to people, they're like, "Whoa, I could never do that. How do you keep track of so many transactions, blah blah blah blah blah." And my answer to that is, "I have a tool in a system that makes the process really easy to maintain." I designed the personal finance dashboard to make expense tracking easy because it is something that I know is going to improve my life. And if it's not easy, then I'm not going to do it. And now that is literally my default Sunday routine. I post it on Instagram every week. I get up, I make my coffee, and I sit down and I track my expenses. It's just part of my day. And the beauty of it is it can adjust or be moved around as I need it to, but I know that I'm going to do it because it's set up in a way that's simple and straightforward.
So it's also important to know when to intentionally break a default. So if something is not working or if something is, you know, changing in your life, you can always shift things because defaults are there to support you. Like you're supposed to remain flexible in your life. So don't think of it as this hard rigid thing. Think of them as things that ultimately will make your life steadier so you spend less time deciding what you're going to do today. and more time actually doing it.
So anyways, I hope that this was helpful in terms of ideally like streamlining a little bit and just reducing the mental load. I know that this is a topic that is really popular and you actually really like my mental load life admin podcast is one of my most downloaded podcasts ever. So that tells me that this sort of topic is very relevant right now. I just think there's obviously a lot going on in the world, a lot going on in our lives, a lot of pressure points, everybody's busy, the economy is flailing, like the world is crumbling down, whatever, and we're all kind of feeling it. So, what I really hope you can take away from this is focusing on the things that you can control and ultimately creating a life that's within your world easier to handle. Because when everything that's outside of your control feels heavy, if you don't have a strong sense of the things that are within your control, it just makes everything worse.
So anyways, if you enjoyed this episode, of course, please let me know. If you have positive feedback or constructive criticism, I would always love to hear from you. I just hope that you are polite. As always, please make sure that you are subscribed to my YouTube channel, follow me on Spotify, subscribe to my Substack because that is where I share notes on all of these episodes and tons of other stuff. If you have a topic or a theme or something you want to discuss more on the show, please let me know. And with that, I will catch you in the next one. Thanks so much for listening.
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