You need to remove from your life the day-to-day
problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day.
‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,’ he said.'I’m trying to pare
down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or
wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He mentioned
research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s
ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting.
'You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize
yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.’
Barack Obama on optimizing decision-making, excerpted from Michael Lewis’s fantastic Vanity Fair profile of the President.