Angela Gorrell addresses decision fatigue on the pod this week. Listen to this episode to find your way back to gumption.

You don’t have time for this podcast. You have 105 other emails just this morning, and you have 44 minutes till your next thing. (Make that 43 minutes.) But maybe you should skim it? Or maybe you should finalize this afternoon’s agenda? (Why did you schedule that meeting for 3:30?) Or maybe you should just delete a bunch of emails?

If you have too many tasks to do before mid-afternoon, you’re eventually going to suffer decision fatigue—aka, ego depletion, brain degradation, cognitive overload.

Sometimes the choices are big.

I wake up every morning with a weight in my chest—so, yeah, I kind of hate this job. But that other position I’ve been looking at has sucky health insurance. Maybe we could go on my partner’s plan, tho’. But I care about the mission here. Also, my hair’s falling out in the shower.

Other times, the choices are micro.

Should I hit the bathroom now? If I take my laptop with me, is that gross? Should I update my operating system like tech support’s been telling me to? Should I make a third cup of coffee?

But the scale of the choices matters less than the sheer fact of how many you have to make. And the longer the day, the less you can decide.

This week, the Mode/Switch’s intergenerational team—Emily, David, LaShone, Madeline, and I—talk with Dr. Angela Gorrell about her latest book, Braving Difficult Decisions: What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. We’re stans for the book, mostly because Angela redirects attention to what lies beneath decision fatigue.

What’s the deep difficulty in your life that’s making these decisions difficult?

Angela says that that when you look beneath the surface, you find cor, which is Latin for heart and, if you follow the etymology long enough, you get to courage.

If it feels like you don’t have time for this Mode/Switch, let our team make just one decision for you today: put in your AirPods and let the Mode/Switch Pod take you towards courage, even in the teeth of too many choices.

Connect and consult with Dr. Angela Gorrell. She’s responsive to DMs on Instagram. She welcomes you to her website. And, yeah, you should buy her books.