Today, I am going to show you how to overcome the choice overload that impacts your decision-making and regain the freedom of fewer options by becoming an essentialist.

The disciplined pursuit of less can help you overcome the fatigue of making too many trivial or significant daily decisions and liberate mental space and time for what matters most.

Most people today have a fundamentally wrong understanding of freedom. They believe that more options equal more freedom. This is far from reality.

Too many options can overwhelm your decision-making process, cause paralysis by analysis, and trigger stress and anxiety.

Modern society and culture condition people for that, making the situation worse. The advent of technology brought an abundance of choice, from the most trivial thing, for example, what food to order online and from where, to the most significant decision, for example, which social media platform to invest in as a solopreneur.

Think about the last time you spent 30 minutes scrolling through Netflix only to give up and watch nothing at all.

That's not freedom - it's imprisonment by abundance.

When faced with excessive choices, our brains become overwhelmed trying to calculate potential outcomes, triggering stress responses rather than satisfaction.

Decision Fatigue: The Hidden Cost of Constant Choosing

Making a decision is a cognitive process. Like all such processes, it requires energy. The part of your brain responsible for decision-making, the prefrontal cortex, works hard every time you present it with a long list of options to assess and decide on.

The more decisions you make, the more mental and physical energy you consume. This can lead to mental exhaustion (even physical fatigue). Body and mind feel tired from the prolonged effort.

Let's put that into the context of a day in your life: you wake up full of energy (more or less) and ready to tackle the day. Your mental batteries are full. Each decision you make consumes a percentage of your energy. One after another, those decisions deplete your batteries (and willpower). Your decision quality also deteriorates as the day progresses. A lack of proper 8-hour sleep or time pressure also exacerbates fatigue. Your day becomes messier, and your energy is almost depleted by the middle of the day.

The more choices you have for each decision, the more you overthink. And overthinking (although beneficial in minimal amounts) is detrimental to your cognitive capacity, mental health, and well-being. Persistent overanalysis (even about trivial things and decisions) leaves little mental capacity for the important ones.

The pattern is clear:

• Making a lot of decisions is not beneficial.

• Investing a lot of time and energy in trivial decisions makes things worse.

• Searching for and analysing more options for each decision keeps you stuck for a long time.

What if you focused on effective moderation instead of optimising for the "best" option? Not every decision requires perfection.

Maximising vs. Satisficing

One reason people get stuck on autopilot is the maximiser mindset. This mindset is the relentless pursuit of the "best possible option" in any situation.

Here's a quick test to check if you have fallen into this trap. Answer the following three questions honestly, considering what you usually do in your everyday life and work.

1. Do you constantly wonder if you could've done better after making a decision?

2. Do you research your options exhaustively before feeling ready to decide?

3. Do you delay decisions indefinitely?

If you responded positively to at least one question, you have a maximiser mindset.

This all comes from Decision Theory. According to science, there are two approaches in any situation:

• Maximising (the optimal choice)

• Satisficing (the "good enough" choice)

The second approach has been proven to be a better option (see? It's not the optimal choice, but it's a better alternative). Satisficers know when to stop researching for more data, insights, and alternatives, limit their options intentionally, and make swift decisions (let's say timely ones). Research shows these people report higher levels of happiness and growth and (guess what) less regret.

Those two approaches are contrasting, and some maximisers may fight back, claiming that "Satisficing is mediocrity!". That would be valid if we only considered one success factor: the quality and impact of a decision. Surely, exhaustively researching your options, assessing them thoroughly, and deciding after deliberate consideration sounds like the best approach.

However, everything comes at a cost. Making a "perfect" decision may take a very long time and require a lot of mental energy and attention. Those are precious resources allocated and spent in maximising your decision-making when they could have been invested otherwise with a much higher overall ROI and impact.

Here's an example. You want to invest in an AI tool to help with your productivity. With a maximiser mindset, you spend a lot of time and energy deciding which tool is best for you. You research thoroughly, check all the details, read reviews and recommendations, contemplate their price, and finally decide in a few weeks. You spend many hours and a lot of energy on this process. The final decision may prove the best (again, it's a probability, not certainty), but the cost is high.

What if you used the satisficing approach? Opting for a good enough choice takes considerably less time and energy. You may decide to invest in a specific AI tool and start trying it. After a while, you may see it doesn't actually suit your needs. You can try another tool (perhaps with a free trial first) and compare the results. Then, you can decide what tool is the best. The cost of this decision-making process is considerably lower than with the maximiser approach.

Also, the certainty is higher. Instead of making a rigid decision based on hypothetical scenarios (how the tools work or may suit your needs), you swiftly try one tool (the one that looks good enough without exhaustive research) and shift to another one if you find that the first one is not exactly what you expected. It's a more flexible, iterative process that allows for more flexibility, testing and experimentation.

I need to repeat this: not every decision requires perfection. You may save your "perfectionism" for the one or two big-impact decisions where excellence truly matters.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

As Greg McKeown explains in his book Essentialism, it's not about doing less. It's about doing only the right things. "Less but better" could be his motto.

At its core, it's about finding freedom through fewer options, while most people today try to free themselves by constantly seeking the more and best options for any decision or choice they have to make.

If you look at how truly exceptional (not successful per se) people live and work, you will realise they are essentially essentialists. It's a recurring pattern when I reflect on how prominent people grow (personally and professionally). They don't diversify their attention and focus on a dozen mediocre pursuits and seemingly essential priorities. They are like skilled gardeners. They know the importance of pruning; it's not optional but necessary for plants and trees to grow.

It all comes down to what you must cut from your life, work, and business. It's about the art of subtraction. Adding tasks, projects, and priorities is no art, but rather a creative way to bring disorder and chaos. And you know what they say: where disorder and chaos rule, meaning and purpose are lost.

To become a genuine essentialist, you need to shift your mindset to the essentials (meaning, the things that matter the most and can move the needle):

• Focus on just a few important things

• Work on those things and make significant progress

• Stop functioning by default and start living and working by design

• Be prepared for tough trade-offs, which pay off in the long term

• Stick to your values and priorities and double down on the few essential things that align with them

Your freedom lies not in having more options, but in having the right ones.

The Power of Constraints: Why Boundaries Fuel Growth

When everything is possible, nothing is interesting. Consider how constraints have birthed remarkable innovations:

• Dr. Seuss wrote "Green Eggs and Ham" using only 50 different words on a bet

• Twitter's 280-character limit forced concise, creative expression

• Jazz musicians create within musical structures, finding freedom through improvisation within boundaries

Most people despise boundaries. They believe they limit their action zone, when in reality, the opposite happens. Boundaries and constraints force the brain to find new ways and solutions.

When you limit the options or choices you consider before making a decision, you essentially create constraints that force your mind to make the most of each situation.

You may decide to limit the time you give yourself to make a decision or to make something work. Or the budget or other resources you allocate to it. You may define the area of allowed action, creating conceptual constraints that fuel creativity.

A river without banks isn't powerful - it's just a flood.

So, the question becomes not how to eliminate all constraints, but which self-imposed boundaries would actually channel your energy more powerfully and accelerate your growth.

Strategic Elimination: The Power of Saying "No" And The 80/20 Rule For Life Design

If you have come this far reading this, kudos. It's not easy to understand that limiting your options in an era of endless choice and abundance is not limiting your freedom.

In a time of "more and not enough," choosing "less and right" is not always straightforward or easily applicable.

However, your duty (if you want to grow) is strategic elimination. This means removing activities, commitments, beliefs, habits, or even people that no longer serve your ideal lifestyle or long-term goals. It's about creating space—mentally, physically, and emotionally—for what truly matters by cutting out what doesn’t.

You have two powerful tools to make that happen:

• The Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of effects come from 20% of causes

• Saying NO

The 80/20 rule is not about whether this mathematical relationship applies to your life and case - it does. The question is whether and how you design your life around it.

In practical terms:

• 20% of your work efforts produce 80% of your results

• 20% of your product offerings generate 80% of revenue

• 20% of your relationships provide 80% of your fulfilment

• 20% of your daily activities create 80% of your progress toward goals

By identifying and doubling down on the 20% that matter most, you can dramatically reduce options while exponentially increasing impact.

To eliminate the remaining 80%, you must learn to say no. I say no to roughly 9 out of 10 requests I receive (whether in personal life, work, or business). I see it this way: every yes I say is a no to something else, and vice versa. Every no I say creates the space for something else (probably better).

How often have you declined a lucrative offer because you have already taken on too many (usually trivial or less essential) commitments? You would love to accept, but you don't have the capacity because of all those lighthearted yeses you said.

Both the yeses and noes you say have to be aligned with your values and priorities. Otherwise, they are random and a no may cause more harm than benefit. Let me put it more clearly: deciding when to say yes or no is obvious if your values and priorities are clearly defined.

• Saying no to meetings, social events, or tasks that don’t align with your vision.

• Dropping routines that waste time or drain energy, like doomscrolling or watching TV out of boredom.

• Letting go of outdated ambitions that no longer excite you, even if they once did.

• Moving away from physical spaces that don’t support your growth (like toxic workplaces or cluttered homes).

• Minimising time with those who consistently drain you or hold you back.

• Eliminating limiting beliefs like “I have to work 9-5 to succeed” or “I’m not creative.”

You may have to say multiple noes to time commitments, habits, obsolete goals, unsupportive environments, mindsets, and even people. However, you are entitled to do so as long as your responses and decisions align with your values and priorities.

A final thought

Your life is designed by what you say no to. In a world obsessed with more options, more information, more productivity, the real power lies in less: Fewer decisions, clearer priorities, and intentional constraints.

Essentialism isn’t a minimalist trend; it’s a mindset for reclaiming your time, energy, and direction.

Now it’s your turn. Start with one strategic elimination this week. Say no to a task, a meeting, a screen habit, or a draining “yes” that’s been clogging your capacity. Replace it with one action aligned with your values and goals.

You don’t need to fix everything at once. But you do need to start subtracting.

Because your freedom isn’t hidden behind more choices. It’s found in choosing less, better.

What’s next?

It’s all about mindset and strategy. As ancient Greek and Roman philosophers taught, we can only control our minds, thoughts, and actions. Focusing on this can help you avoid unnecessary struggle, get unstuck, and move forward faster.

If you need guidance getting unstuck and making crucial mindset shifts, I can help, especially if

• you want to quit your 9-5 job and create your one-person business, but you struggle to pivot (and then regret not making the leap)

• you are a currently struggling introverted solopreneur (stuck in failure, regret and a flawed mindset that doesn’t serve you)

DM me on LinkedIn, and let’s explore how Mindset Coaching can help you move forward and claim what you desire and deserve for a life and work with purpose, meaning and enjoyment.

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