Guard Your Gear
On decision fatigue, attention, and the erosion of creative clarity
We spend a lot of time talking about tools as writers. We’re always on the hunt for the right notebook, the perfect app, a better keyboard, the perfect writing space… but those are our least important tools.
The perfect keyboard won’t type your novel for you. The best pen in the world doesn’t meet deadlines on its own. We can spend hours looking for the right fold-up, portable keyboard with low profile chiclet style keys (we can, and I did) while neglecting the tools that do the heavy lifting—our brains.
Ever tried to write while exhausted? The words chip out like flakes of rust. They crumble to the page, painfully eking out, slow and grinding. Your computer can be fast, but it still can’t write the story without you.
We live in an age of constant input. We constantly scroll and skim. We absorb fragments of outrage, comparison, urgency, and noise, often before we roll out of bed. Then we sit down to write…
…and wonder why nothing comes.
Or worse, what we write feels thin, reactive, or disconnected from who we actually are. This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s malnourishment of your mind.
Mental malnourishment creeps into our lives quietly. It can look like starting the day already overwhelmed and jumping between tabs, tasks, and thoughts. It’s feeling busy but unable to go deep, struggling to make simple decisions and avoiding the page because your brain feels… tired.
What’s happening isn’t a lack of creativity. It’s that your cognitive resources are being spent everywhere else.
The Hidden Drain of Decision Fatigue
Research suggests we make tens of thousands of decisions a day, many so small we don’t even notice them. And while scientists debate exactly how decision fatigue works, the outcome is clear: the more decisions we make, the worse we get at making the ones that matter. By the time we arrive at our writing, we’ve already made dozens, sometimes hundreds, of micro-decisions.
We don’t run out of creativity. We run out of clarity, not because we’ve used it up on our work… but because we’ve spent it deciding what to wear, what to eat, what to click, what to answer, and what to worry about.
The brain isn’t built for endless choice. The more we simplify, the more clearly we can think and the more deeply we can create. Studies show that when we reduce unnecessary decisions, we improve cognitive efficiency and preserve mental energy for more meaningful work. Every decision we remove is space we give back to our thinking.
The High Cost of the Attention Economy
Social media doesn’t just take time. It forces continuous micro-decisions, which quietly drain cognitive capacity. When you’re on social media, your brain is constantly cycling through choices to read or scroll, like or dislike, comment or block. Even if you don’t consciously notice it, your brain is evaluating every piece of content.
This creates a high-frequency decision environment. Instead of a few meaningful decisions, you’re making hundreds of low-stakes decisions per minute.
Doomscrolling feels passive, but it’s actually a constant stream of tiny decisions. Your brain is repeatedly choosing what to read, skip, react to, compare, or click next, often hundreds of times in a short period. Each of those micro-decisions uses a bit of mental energy, and because the content keeps changing, your brain is also constantly resetting its focus. By the time you stop scrolling, you may feel like you’ve been “resting,” but you’ve actually spent a lot of your cognitive capacity on low-value choices, leaving you mentally tired and with less clarity and focus for deeper, more meaningful work, like your writing.
Boredom has become something we try to eliminate, but for creators, it’s one of our most valuable states. When we stop feeding the mind constant input, the brain begins to generate its own thoughts. This is where ideas form, where connections happen, where something original starts to take shape. But if we fill every quiet moment, we never give our minds the chance to do this work. We sit down to write and feel empty, when in reality, we’ve just never allowed ourselves the space to become full. Boredom isn’t a problem. It’s the beginning of creation.
Guarding Your Energy
People and projects drain our mental energy in a similar way, but at a deeper and more sustained level. Every interaction or commitment brings ongoing decisions: what to say, how to respond, how to prioritize, how to manage expectations, and how to solve problems. Those decisions don’t happen once, they repeat over time.
A draining conversation, a misaligned collaboration, or a project we said yes to out of obligation can quietly occupy our thoughts even when we’re not actively working on them, creating a kind of mental “background processing.” This uses up the same limited cognitive resources we need for creative work, so by the time we sit down to write, part of our attention is already tied up in unresolved conversations, obligations, or decisions we’re still carrying.
Part of protecting our tools is learning to say: not right now, not this project, not at this level of involvement and not without clear boundaries
This isn’t selfish. It’s strategic.
Your work requires you, not the version of you that’s scattered, exhausted, and overcommitted but the version that has space to think.
Boring Life, Bold Work
If we want to keep creating, we need to build lives that support creation. Many great thinkers and creators have quietly done this: they remove as many unnecessary decisions from their lives as possible.
Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day. Barack Obama and Einstein limited their suit choices. Twyla Tharp starts every day with the same taxi ride to the gym as a ritual that eliminates the need to decide whether to begin. This lack of variety isn’t because they lacked creativity, but because they were protecting it.
They understood that every small decision we make takes a little bit of mental energy. So instead of spending that energy on what to wear, what to eat, or how to structure their day, they automated those choices. They saved their thinking for where it mattered most. Their work.
One of my favorite quotes is by Gustave Flaubert, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” I sum this up as a boring life for bold work.
The Most Important Decision
Reducing decision fatigue doesn’t require a complete life overhaul. It starts with small, intentional shifts. We can remove a few daily decisions by standardizing meals or outfits, delay input by avoiding our phones in the morning, and batch tasks like messages or admin work instead of scattering them throughout the day.
Creating simple defaults helps us stop re-deciding the same things over and over. Decide to write first or set boundaries around social media. Even something as small as writing things down instead of holding them in our heads can lighten the load. The goal isn’t rigidity, it’s clarity. Every decision we remove is energy we get to spend on our work.
The Real Shift
We often think the answer is getting more time. We joke about getting 25 hours in a day, eight days a week, but many of us give more of our time away than we realize. This week, instead of wondering where our time has gone, figure out what’s been nibbling it away.
Then, gently, deliberately, firmly… take it back.
Our theme for this month is Guard Your Gear. It’s not just about protecting our writes, getting extended warranties or adding AirTags to your laptop. It’s about protecting our most important tools: our minds, our imagination, and our mental well-being.
When we do this, we’re not just making writing easier.
We’re making it possible.
This Week in the Ecosystem
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⭐ APR 7 · Space & Time Podcast Celebrate the new monthly issue of Space & Time in this live podcast event featuring readings of selected stories and poetry from the current issue, along with submission updates and insights from the editorial team. Hosted by Publisher Ryan Aussie Smith and Editor-in-Chief Angela Yuriko Smith, this session offers a behind-the-scenes look at the magazine while highlighting the voices within its pages. Times vary by location. See link for details.
https://open.substack.com/live-stream/153874
🚀 APR 9 · HWA NY Galactic Terrors Join co-hosts Carol Gyzander and James Chambers for a special celebration for the 60th anniversary of SPACE & TIME magazine, featuring founder and former editor GORDON LINZNER, past publisher and editor-in-chief HILDY SILVERMAN, and current publisher ANGELA YURIKO SMITH with a special video message from LINDA D. ADDISON, the current poetry editor. Free event, 8 pm EDT.
This is exactly what I needed to hear today. Thank you, Angela <3
Doomscrolling exhausts me too :)