Micro decisions

Every day the average person makes hundreds of micro decisions, if you are a mum, you probably make thousands. What is a micro decision I hear you ask? 

A micro decision is the split second decision between every thing you think and do.  These are the tiny thoughts between the intention and action; 

“I should call blah. Where did I save their number, I think I wrote it down, I’ll check my notebook first.”

“What should we eat for dinner tonight, do I let the spinach go bad and make something yum, or do I make something with spinach in it.”

I will be fresh for 15 more seconds

“Should I follow up that client now? Is it too soon?”

“Is this quote too much? What did we quote last time? Will they expect an increase?”

“Do I remind them of the deadline or do they already know? Will it annoy them if I follow up again?”

All of these fiddly little decisions make up a day. The more micro decisions we make, the more we wear down the battery store of our most valuable asset; our brain power. 

As anyone who is balancing family, career, friends, side hustles, relationships etc, you know that there are only so many hours in the day. And there are only so many of those hours where you have the brain power to do the things you want to do. 

Micro decisions creep into all our thought processes, soaking up brain space. 

So how do you reduce those micro decisions, how do you take back control of your biggest asset? 

I’m not in the industry of life advice or self help; I’d never call myself a life coach and my partner will verify that I’m not particularly neat. 

But one thing I have mastered over 12 years of working in project, operations and business management is how to implement the systems and processes that can reduce those micro decisions - at work at least. 

(Which should free you up to consider how best to manage the rapidly deteriorating  spinach in your fridge.)

Creating streamlined processes in your business removes the biggest micro decisions that most people encounter - what do I do next? Who do I talk to now and what do they need to know? 

You can already see that by handling those types of micro decisions, we’ve already freed up a significant portion of brain energy. 

You are probably now asking, how do I do this? Excellent question, please buy my ebook. 

Just kidding. 

1. Identify your goals for your business. Write this somewhere and keep it handy.

2. Write down all the processes that currently happen in your business. If it’s currently chaos, try to identify some. To start you off, these could be: 

   1. Sales

   2. Invoicing

   3. New client onboarding 

   4. Prototyping 

   5. Research 

   6. Launch

3. Now sketch out a process map for each of them, starting with your most painful or most important. Capture everything as it occurs currently.

4. Then overlay your process maps identifying any areas of waste. (See this article on how to identify waste). 

5. Then design the perfect process - ideally, how will this flow. Remember your goals from step one! Design a process that supports your success. 

6. Once you’ve done that, identify anything standing in your way, list them out and tackle these in order of priority. 

7. Share the new process with your team, soft launch and monitor the process carefully for the first couple of times, tweaking as required. 

With some dedicated time you can knock this out in less than a week. Get your team involved, don’t do it alone. 

Clear, thoughtful, strategic processes help everyone - new staff will be easier to train, existing staff will have clarity and autonomy, clients will be able to understand what’s expected of them and managers won’t need to get involved as often. It’s a win win. 

Mostly, importantly, you’ll be getting back your headspace. You’ll be able to focus on the things that are most valuable in your business. 

The next step of course is to add systems and automation into that lovely new process - but will have to buy my course for that ; )