Danger Brain

I am currently staying at a hotel in San Diego.* I do this from time to time to crank out a lot of writing. Over the years I have learned that I am most productive between about 4pm and 1am. This is not an optimal schedule for my life. At 4pm I usually get Leo. Then we do the nightly grind. Dinner, shower, reading, begging that the random shit he leaves all over the house gets picked up, book, bed. The usual. He is settled in his bed by about 7.45/8 these days which would make it seem like I now have hours of uninterrupted time to work. Incorrect. Those after school hours of Momming tend to break my brain (and sometimes my spirit!). If you have a kid you know what I mean. Right after pick up is usually fine. Leo is still abuzz with the day and excited to be home and see the dogs. Dinner is usually pretty ok too as long as it is pasta, pizza, or mac and cheese (which is NOT pasta in case you thought it was). Don’t worry he eats veggies on the side. When we head into shower time things can start to get dicey and somewhere around 6.30 or 7.00 things just tend to break down. Kind requests are met with fiery responses and simple chores become impossible. This is also the time when Leo has the fiercest of criticisms of my parenting. My amazing friend Richard Rathburn calls this danger brain and we have stolen the term. In our house, danger brain is described as your body and your brain not listening to each other. 

This is a real thing and it doesn’t just happen to kids. If you think about a typical day, how many decisions do you think you make? The most common estimate I’ve seen is 35,000. That is not a typo but I also can’t find a clear citation to back it up. There is, however, specific research from Cornell that says we make over 200 decisions just linked to food in a day. So we are making somewhere between 200 and 35,000 decisions per day and the quality of those decisions erodes as the day wears on. This is due to a very real phenomenon called ego depletion or decision fatigue.** 

Each decision we make takes a toll on our brains. Things like what mug to use for your coffee takes far less of a toll than deciding if you want to accept a promotion but it all adds up. This means that by the end of the day we are depleted mentally and emotionally. This is when our patience and will-power are at their lowest. It’s the time when you are trying exceptionally hard to be kind and understanding but end up yelling and then feel terrible about it. Decision fatigue isn’t limited to the end of the day at home. It also pops up in work situations, especially when  individuals may face a variety of tricky choices throughout the day. The daily stresses of working during the pandemic have only exacerbated the prevalence of decision fatigue. 

Since I have been living this and it can sometimes make for a really crappy evening I wanted to see if there are ways to help our danger brains and their decision fatigue. It turns out there are some fairly practical things we can do and most of them can be applied to home or work. One of them is attempting to reduce the number of decisions you have to make in a day. That may sound impossible but it’s why some people opt for the same outfit every day, meal prep, make lists, or get everything together for the next day the night before; it saves them a little bit of thinking time. Some recommend establishing a routine for certain tasks to diminish the decision making around them. I started to do this by planning out my workouts the week before so they are on my calendar and booked and I don’t have to think about it and it definitely helps. Another common suggestion is to make big/important decisions in the morning, but after coffee I assume. Makes sense. Your brain is fresh and ready for a new day. I also appreciate the idea of “batching” your decision making. I started (trying) to do this recently and when you commit it really works because you are focusing on one thing for a limited amount of time. These suggestions aren’t going to eliminate danger brain. Overwhelm is bound to happen. It is possible though that they may help you avoid eating the remaining macaroni and cheese out of the pot on the stove while drinking a massive glass of wine and crying at 7.15 pm on a Tuesday even though you swore to yourself that you were only going to drink on the weekends and know gluten will wreck your stomach. Maybe.

*Fun fact. I thought the hotel was booked for 2 nights but it was only booked for one. When the hotel called my husband to say I had not checked out but that all of my things were still in the room he momentarily thought I had been murdered/kidnapped. I was just on my way to yoga.
**Most researchers use these terms interchangeably but some argue that ego depletion as a higher-order construct.