Cara Harvey (01:06.35)

Welcome to the Purpose Driver Mom Show, episode 497. Today, I want to talk to you about the invisible weight of decision fatigue, why it lives so heavy in your brain, and how it fuels your procrastination. Show notes for this episode will be at a purpose-drivenmom.com, such for podcast 497. Now, have ever sat down to get anything done, whether it’s working your business at home, getting a decluttering project done, something just for you?

and all of a sudden it feels too hard to start. This is a conversation we just had in my last coaching call of 2025. I’m recording this in December to get ahead a little bit. And the conversation was like getting started, that momentum, it becomes so hard. And one of the reasons why is because of decision fatigue. Okay, it’s not burnout all the time, it’s not laziness. It’s often the mental exhaustion. Again, I’m recording this right, it’s two days before Christmas.

I’m full of decision fatigue and I know this is coming out in February, but we wanted this to air in February because we know that you’ve just gone through January, where you were trying to work on all your goals, things got moved around, and you’re unsure what to do next, okay? Decision fatigue, it’s that heavy, heavy weight behind the procrastination. And today, I wanna talk to you about why it happens. I think a lot of us can kind of pinpoint a few of those reasons.

how to work with your brain instead of fighting it and actually get things done. Decision fatigue in itself, in the most simple way, right, is your brain just getting tired from making too many choices. Can we say motherhood, right? And it’s invisible because decisions don’t often feel like work. They just feel like weight. A lot of times when we’re on coaching calls and talking about goal setting and things like that, I always tell my moms, why don’t we just make the goal this week to decide?

If we can cross the decision off the list for whatever the thing is you’re working on, it’s one less thing you have to think about. And we think about a lot, all the time. What are we gonna have for dinner? What’s today’s schedule look like? Oh, we’ve got a permission slip to sign. Maybe there’s a play date. There’s a logistic for this thing that we’re doing for the kids. The emotional decision. I was just talking to my husband about how parenting in itself, the decision fatigue and the mental load of parenting where

Cara Harvey (03:19.872)

You know, my daughter just turned 10 or in this tweenie bop age, the attitude and the sass is real and having to figure out how to parent through that. My son got glasses in the past few months. He’s struggling to remember to bring his glasses. And, you know, I’m always thinking, how can I get him to do this? What can I teach him? Right. It is always on us. And it’s not always the big decisions. Now, sometimes it is. Sometimes we’re like, all right, I have big things I have to decide. But a lot of times it’s the tiny.

It’s the tiny things that continue to add up and add up and add up. And the volume becomes so huge that it feels insurmountable. Again, I’m recording this two days before Christmas. It’s actually my daughter’s 10th birthday today. So thinking even just the holidays, I can’t even, my husband actually was so wonderful. He walked in before when I was about to record and he said, you you did a good job this morning with like my daughter’s birthday gifts. She only opened a few of them because she had school today. And it was just thinking about that of like,

the holidays for a lot of us and the mental of that traditionally lands on mom of the gifts and not just the family gifts, but the teacher gifts. And like I get things for the crossing guards and deciding about this holiday magic and that holiday magic. And then again, like I mentioned, today’s my daughter’s birthday and it’s just so much. And moms are very vulnerable to decision fatigue because traditionally, stereotypically, primarily, I’m gonna throw all these words in, your home may look different.

I apologize if I’m being stereotypical or sexist, but just thinking about the way the patriarchy has set up motherhood, all right? So throw those caveats out there. It’s not fair, but it is what it is. Mom tends to be the one to have the emotional labor of the family on us. We often are the default decision maker for things, right? Signing my kids up for sports, making all decisions. Now, yeah, your home may have different…

boundaries and things like that that we’ll talk about ways that you can get other people on board and lift the decision fatigue because I did a lot of that this holiday season like where I was like and I’m not making this decision it’s on you to my husband. We also are constantly context switching, especially if you work from home like I do. Right now I’m recording this podcast because I wanted to take a break. I actually was gonna take this week off of work but I still have a couple things to close up shop on.

Cara Harvey (05:41.358)

I wanna take the next two weeks off of recording when my kids aren’t home, they’re at school today, which is wild how late they go to school, but I’ll take the hours, right? So I’m working from home. This morning, I was mom.

Right? And I was in birthday mode. And then I needed to be in self-care mode because I needed to get my workout in. Now I’m in work mode. I’m about to go switch back to mom mode so we can go and celebrate my daughter’s birthday. I’m also the household manager. now I have to think about being a good wife and a good, my mom’s birthday is tomorrow and I got to, I’m planning my sister’s 40th and like, I got to think about all these things. There is rarely a shut down moment for a mom’s brain. It-

tends to be when we sleep. And I don’t know about you, but I dream sometimes about my two, so I’ve been having the weirdest dreams lately. I wanna blame Stranger Things, because I’ve been dreaming, I’ve been like in Stranger Things lately. But we don’t get to stop. This isn’t a personal failing if your brain feels like it’s spiraling all the time. This is a structural issue. And for those of you who struggle also with executive functioning, things like ADHD,

autism, your brain is also wired a little differently. So you might have different things coming at you at different times and it feels very insurmountable and challenging to even manage it. And as mom, we are the keeper of the things. So the decision fatigue feels heavy. And then the decision fatigue turns into procrastination. It is a protective response. So what happens internally when we’re using decision fatigue as a procrastination tool, I talk a few about a few

Procrastination tools we have planning is one of those. The decision fatigue is another. Our brain sees the effort that we have to put in to all the things. It sees the uncertainty of not knowing what to do next. And it goes, nope, because we’ve talked about this before. Our brain’s job is to try to keep us safe. Whether it’s don’t touch the stove because it’s hot, don’t take this risk because it feels dangerous, right? We get into flight, fright, flight, fight.

Cara Harvey (07:42.254)

or fawn modes, right? Where our brain is trying to make a decision of what to do. And when it comes to the decision fatigue being a procrastination tool, often that’s us in fawn, where we’re just like, I don’t even know where to start. I’m just staring out the window. How do I get moving? Okay. This also could look like overthinking. So if we’re overthinking small tasks, like I need to get these things done. This paperwork needs to get filled out.

It’s a small task that has to get done, but then we overthink, well, this is going to take really long. I talk a lot of moms about this. Like sometimes things take so much less time than we think, which is why I teach the 15 minute formula, right? Things don’t always have to take a ton of time, but our brain will be like, let me overthink this and overthink this and overthink this and not take action. It also can lead us to avoid the meaningful goals. The things that

we really need to work on, but our brain is like, you’ve got too much to handle in the next 24 hours. There’s no way you can think about this thing you’d like to achieve in the next year. And then instead, our brain says, let’s be safe. Let’s think of a numbing type of activity. Let me scroll my phone, right? Let me watch a show. Let me do something that is not moving forward on this because I can’t even think about it. And I often feel this way, like at the end of the night.

So one of the tools I gave you was like, how do you plan around decision fatigue? But knowing that this is a pattern is important in helping kind of move past it, all right? But then we get stuck in this guilt loop. I delay working on the thing I need to work on. I delay getting the dishes done or my meal plan or whatever it is. Then I feel shame because I haven’t worked on the thing. Then I have more mental load because not only am I feeling behind, unmotivated,

And like, crud, I have these tasks to get done. I now feel like a big old loser because I haven’t worked on any of it. So now I have this bigger mental load of trying to figure out what’s wrong with me that I can’t just get started on something and then I avoid it more. Does that sound familiar to anybody else? Right? The guilt loop then becomes procrastination where we wind up not doing simple things, medium things, or the big things we need to do. So how do you know if you’re dealing with it? Maybe you’ve said or come across a couple of these phrases like,

Cara Harvey (09:58.67)

I just don’t know what to do. I struggle to get started. If you feel that way, you’re probably stuck in decision fatigue because there’s too many open loops right now and you’re like, which one do I start on? With you have that relief when someone else decides, oh, is that not the best? Sometimes I’ll just tell my husband, like, I don’t want to make a decision about this. Can you do it? That was the thing. Again, Christmas time right now. I said to my husband, we always do like a Pollyanna. Everybody gets a $25 gift with the family, whatever. It’s fun.

But I just couldn’t do it. I was like, I finished Christmas shopping for the kids in November. I’m wrapped. I don’t want to think about this one piece that like we hadn’t planned on doing and then we decided to do it. He’s like, well, I want to do it. And I said, good, you can decide then. I said, you’re in charge of buying both the gifts for one gift for you, one gift for me, because every person brings it in and I don’t have to think about it. that relief of like, this is off my plate or someone else just deciding what’s for dinner. Right. All of those things. When you start off really strong.

in the beginning of the day and then you start to stall. Part of that is decision fatigue. Part of that might also just be going with your natural rhythm. So pay attention to that. Or if you’re getting started and you really, really care about and then you lose your motivation, you’re like, I just don’t want to do this. Even though it’s fun, even though it’s important to me, even though I want to do it. And this could be things like hobbies. I love to read, but sometimes I’m so full of decision fatigue in my life that I don’t even want to think about my book. I don’t even want to pick it up. If any of this sounds familiar,

know that you’re just overloaded. And I’m give you some tools on how we can lighten that weight for you right now as you go into the year and get things done because sometimes deciding is just the first step and the primary goal.

Cara Harvey (11:47.906)

I know we also want to just be more motivated. You might hear this, like your why needs to be bigger than your excuses. Just use your willpower. Willpower fails when our brains are tired. And the thing is not all of us are naturally motivated. I said this last episode, I am a very driven person. I’m not always motivated. Motivation is a spark. It’s a thing that comes and goes. And when your decision load is so heavy,

Just saying, I just need to be motivated to do it isn’t gonna happen. So stop asking like, how am gonna push myself? When am I gonna be motivated? And just ask yourself the better question, which is how can I decide on less? So let’s talk about ways you can reduce your decision fatigue and move forward, okay? Some of it’s going to be inviting others to help. Some of it’s going to be taking things off of your plate. And some of this is just gonna be lightening in the moment. One of the things that helps, I always talk about,

proactive versus reactive strategies, pre-deciding common decisions. I cannot remember, Emily Lay’s book, I can’t remember what it’s called, but she had this thing in there and she, no, maybe it was Kendra Adachi. I don’t remember the author. So I apologize for not giving credit, but it was decide once, right? When you decide once about things, then everything becomes easier. I decided once that I’m not doing Christmas cards. I like to receive them.

Thank you very much if you send them. I don’t care. I don’t want to waste the paper. I don’t want to find a picture. It is not worth it for me to send them out when I know most people throw them away. It’s just not something I personally care about. So I’ve decided once that I’m not doing it and every year it’s one less thing on my list. So how can you do this in the day to day? How can you do this in the week to week? Things like meals. One of my goals in this year is to get better at pre meal planning dinner. So I’m not thinking what are we going to eat?

I teach a theming system where you pick a theme for each of your months. And I knew I had a very busy January. We were traveling every weekend for cheer and things. So I knew I needed something to support me, so I picked meal planning. I made my meal plan for the entire quarter in December, where I decided dinners for January, February, March. I went through, I organized my meals. I didn’t make shopping lists because I wanted to see what we had.

Cara Harvey (14:09.206)

Though again, I’m recording this in December now I’m thinking maybe I should even make up the shopping list for each week and then that way I can just, I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna also go through and make a shopping list for the week and then all I’m gonna have to do is like go through and look in my cabinet and be like, wait, do we have this or not? And then that way I can batch buy things. Grady Dicker. All right, that just came to me. But things like that. If I don’t have to think about what’s for dinner on Tuesday night in two weeks,

It’s one less thing. Plan it in advance. This is why rhythms, routines, all of these help us make less decisions, because it’s predictable. We know what’s gonna happen. Same with my work blocks. This year, I’m amplifying what I’m doing. have technically three things I’m working on. So, a purpose for mom is my main job. I also work for a company called Macaroni Kid, where I run a local website about events in the area. And I just took on a brand new job with a nonprofit called Girls Empowered, where I go and I actually get to teach essentially what I’m teaching here to moms.

to teenagers and preteens. It’s very part time, a few times a month. I’m trying to do more. I need to predetermine my work blocks so when it’s time to sit down I can just get started. Common decisions, things you’re gonna do, if you can decide before you sit down, it’ll make it easier. When I go to sit down, I just talked about this in another episode, but when it’s my podcast block.

I already have written down that I have these two episodes to record. I knew I had to get these things done. So I’ve already made the decision for myself and now it’s not figuring out what do I have to do. It’s what did past Kara say we were gonna do and let me do it based on my rhythms and my routines like I talked about last episode. Create some defaults for yourself, right? When X happens, I do Y. So a way that I reduce decision fatigue in this, when my kids come home with a birthday invitation or in their folder,

I RSVP right away, okay? Now paperwork, stuff like that goes into my command center and I fill that out on Fridays during my admin block, but I have found for birthday invitations, if I don’t RSVP right away, it gets lost somewhere. So I RSVP, I made a rule for myself, it’s less of a decision, all right? The other thing, this is a default like we have on our calendar, I’m a pretty full calendar person, something busy, full calendar person, as is my husband, he’s involved in multiple organizations.

Cara Harvey (16:28.782)

plus work and things like that. So the rule that we made tends to be, if you’re the last one to put it on the calendar, you’re in charge of childcare. So if I have something on the calendar and he adds it later or vice versa, that person has to decide who’s watching the kids. And it just is so much more helpful than having to make the decision. I also wanna encourage you to limit your decision windows. Do not like…

something that you can make a decision on. If you’re like, I need to decide if I’m going to do this or this, I’m gonna do it by the end of the week. And the other thing that I do is I will sometimes, like I said, make decision the goal. So I will say, what are all the things I need to decide right now by the end of the week? And I have it on my thought catcher and I will sit down during my admin block and I will just make decisions about all those things. And then it lightens that load. Another tip I have for this one, external systems. Your planner, checklist.

Automating things, things like automating your bills. You don’t have to think about it. It just kind of happens. So if I have a system, if I have a thing that I’m following, if I have autoresponders in my emails, it allows the decision to go off my brain and go somewhere else. Structure, I know it feels counterintuitive, but it actually supports freedom, especially when you’re in these busy seasons, because it makes you think about things less.

If you say to yourself, have one errands block a week and that’s the only time running errands. Well, the decision is made when you’re going to do something right. And if you can predetermine things and obviously be flexed, but predetermine them, you’re going to have less things to think about. The other thing I want to talk about, though, is sometimes when we have too many goals that we’re focusing on. Now, I teach it for a tiering system in my program. Tier one goals. These are our brand new goals. These are the ones that need the most attention. These are the ones I’m focusing on with all my five points in them. OK.

But when we have too many tier one goals, we often will struggle to get things done because we don’t know where to start. So when you’re looking at your goals, I want you to prioritize them, right? What is the one if I could only complete one by the end of the month? That is the one I wanna work on. And then break them down. Inside the 15 minute formula, I teach all these systems of how to break down your different types of goals. We have numerical goals, we have project-based goals, habit-based goals.

Cara Harvey (18:43.798)

and learning base goals. And then this year we added in joy base goals, which is a new fun thing we’ll talk about. So what is your next step? It’s not, I need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, it’s the next one. On our coaching calls on the Purpose Driven Mom Club, we have a formula that we use when you get on the calls. We share your win to get your mind in the right spot. Then we talk about what you got accomplished from your list last week, any places you need help. And then that last piece is what are you going to do this week? What is your action this week? It’s not,

I’m going to declutter my whole house. It’s I’m going to go into the kitchen and do these three sections. Very specific. So in order to help reduce your decision fatigue, I want you to make your goals smaller. I want you to make them very clear. Like what does it look like? And again, and if you want to say my goal this week is to just decide, then just decide. All right. And I want you to think about success more as consistency instead of intensity, just because it’s moving forward.

It doesn’t have to always be, I gotta do everything at this large scale. Another thing that I wanna encourage you to do though, is if it can take you less than a few minutes, try to do it on the spot. So sometimes again, back to the RSVPing, that doesn’t take me very long. So that might be something I do right away. I want you to think if I can make this decision, I’m just gonna make it on the spot. Same if I’m going through my emails. If I’m sorting through and decluttering, right?

People are like, do I declutter best? Well, my recommendation, right, is to have your first round, donate trash keep. Make an instant split second decision. Do I want to donate it trash keep? If I’m not sure, put it in the keep for now. Then real quick, don’t look at everything, don’t, you know, paperwork, et cetera. Then go through it another round. Make the decision, make the decision. The faster you can get yourself to make some decisions, the more frequently you’re gonna be able to make them.

So what I want to do this week is think about your mental load. Think about all the things you have written down. And if you haven’t written them down, that’s my bonus tip today. Write them down. When they’re swimming in our brain, it’s very easy to be super overwhelmed. But when we get them down on paper, we actually are giving ourselves a beautiful gift of freeing up our mental space. But I always talk about quadrant organizing. Don’t just write them down. You’re going to want to have a system for how do you organize them in order of priority.

Cara Harvey (21:09.366)

So what are your urgent things that have to get done? What is the order you need to work on them and create your plan for them? If you get them out of your head and onto paper, then you can make some choices. So this week, I want you to take that list and pick one decision on there that you’re like, I’m removing this. I can delegate it. I can give it to somebody else. Other people in my home are capable of making decisions as well. I do not have to think for everyone. I said this over Christmas because I was feeling like so overloaded. And I said to my family,

I have a lot on my brain right now. I am unable to also think for you. So I need you to try to think for yourself. And this is one thing personally that arcs me when people like put their mental load on me. So wait, didn’t mean to, I’m going to give a bonus bonus tip because this just came to my head. I struggle with feeling grace filled when people treat me like their time matters more. No.

This is a belief system that I have, so it might not be their intention, but when people ask me questions that I’ve already answered and they don’t bother to look them up, I get irked, irked, okay? My love language is acts of service. Why? Because it frees up my time. My time is my most precious commodity. very much, if you can free up my time, it really, for me, shows that love that you understand what matters to me, which is time to do the things I wanna do, right?

And so I’ll just give an example. I’m a Girl Scout leader. I send very thorough emails every week with information. There is no questioning. I’m not gonna give myself 100%. I’ll give myself an A but not an A plus. I’m very thorough on the information I have to give. I cannot tell you the amount of times I will get texts. Do we have a meeting today? Girl, if you don’t check your email, I can’t with that. That drives me.

bonkers. When I have taken my time, so you can tell I’m getting hurt, I’ve taken my time to organize something, to do something, to put it out there, to make it easy. If you cannot use your brain to, like I can’t decide for you. So I have had to teach people like how to navigate this. So if I get that text of, we have a meeting? I’ll be like, yep, it’s all on the, check the calendar. It’s all on the calendar. And I refer them back to a system.

Cara Harvey (23:35.372)

This was actually something that I reflect on though too, because I’m always like, am I not clear enough? So one of the issues, not issues, but the things I noticed after I’ve been doing this for five years was people couldn’t remember like, did I pay for this thing? Right? If we had a $5 event here or there. And when I joined my daughter’s cheer gym, they send out these beautifully organized dashboards where it’s very clear what you have to pay for, when you have to pay for, and if you paid for it. I loved it. So I thought everyone keeps asking, did I pay for this? And then I would forget, cause it would be on my mind. I’d have to check my spreadsheet, whatever.

So I just made everyone a dashboard and they copied the cheer one and I made it for Girl Scouts. And it has all their payments on there, anything they have to pay for, any events we’re going through, whatever. So now when people ask me, does my kid have any credit? Do they have to pay for this? What do I owe for this? I have decided a line, which is it’s all on the dashboard. You can go check your dashboard. The dashboard is updated. And guess what? Since we’ve started the dashboards,

very few people still take advantage of my brain space and time in this way. And again, I’m snarky right now, because I know this isn’t the issue that I really struggle with this, but it does feel like people take advantage of my brain space in that way. And it makes me feel like you’re saying your time is more valuable than mine. So I’m not going to bother checking. But part of the things we have to check ourselves on is I’ve created this.

I like being a person that people can ask questions to and rely on. So I will answer things for people, which then doesn’t give them the space to be independent. I create that. So I’ve had to retrain that around the people in my space, my kids, you know, other stakeholders, because if we constantly do things and make all the decisions and don’t let people think for themselves, why would they do it? Right. And then the decision fatigue lands on us. So when we got to Christmas, right, talked about gifts, I said to my husband,

These are the gifts, like I got these gifts. You’re getting gifts for your parents. You’re getting this, da, da, da, And I’m done with it. We have to let other people also do things and make decisions. Yes, majority will land on us. And if you’re at the point where like, I feel this, like I’m taking on other people’s mental load, which is exhausting because my mental load is so full. I want you to go through and think of where that is, in what areas of your life you’re taking on other people’s mental load.

Cara Harvey (25:52.502)

and come up with a system on how you can switch it to empower them to use their own mental load. Because it isn’t fair for you to take on the, the system’s already not fair, right? I’m taking on the mental load for my family as mom. But when other adults give it to me, I get so irked. So I just want you to know, you can retrain people to take the mental load back.

So when you’re looking at your list this week, is there something you can delegate? Is there something you can remove? Is there something you can pre-decide or something you can automate? Or is there something you’re like, I can delay this, okay? Sometimes our progress will come from subtraction instead of addition. We don’t have to keep adding things to our plate when we can say to ourselves, let me take this off mine. You’re just carrying too much right now. Go through and think of the strategies we talked about today and ask yourself, how can I carry less?

How can I work with my brain and not fight against it? You are doing so much invisible work already. I want you to come up with systems that help support you, but I also want you to come up with ways that you can create boundaries with other people so that you don’t take on their mental load as well. Again, it’s not fair for us to like, I’m gonna put my mental load on you, but other times my mental load is not always Kara’s stuff.

Right? It’s other people’s stuff. So yes, I take on Kara’s mental load. I also take on a lot of the mom stuff, the home stuff, the work stuff, et cetera. But again, like I gave that example of you can like, Google is free, right? Like other people can think on their own. If you are always jumping to solve everyone else’s problems, they’re going to assume you’re going to jump to solve their problems. Then they’re going to keep putting and piling their mental load on you. And guess whose fault that is? Because it’s not theirs.

You’ve trained them that that’s okay. So if you’re feeling that way, go through that list and say, wait, this isn’t my mental load. I’m gonna volley that one back, right? I’m gonna volley that back. You let me know.

Cara Harvey (27:56.15)

I say that one a lot too. I’m like, so people come to me with ideas, stuff they wanna do. That’s a great idea. Okay, you think it through. And I do this with work, right? If somebody on the team comes with me with something, I love that idea. You think it through, come back to me with what a solution would be. Come back to me with a plan. Come back to me with those things. We don’t always have, we like to be the one to solve the problems. It makes us feel like mommy superhero, right? And I say we, cause I’m the same. I love being a reliable person. I like being the hero in the story, but.

Sometimes being the hero in the story and solving everything for everyone else makes me resentful and it makes me feel like my life is the villain in the story. And I don’t wanna feel that way and I don’t think you do either. I’m gonna put all the show notes at a purposetrippermom.com slash podcast 497. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk rant today. You can tell I am in December and my decision fatigue is high. I know this is coming in February, but like my brain is so overloaded that I’m like, I can’t go into another year.

owning everybody else’s issues and thinking for other people, I want to lighten my load. And I hope these strategies help you as well today.

Cara Harvey (29:07.736)

Houston.