22. Automated Decisions

Managing your time effectively is some of the most important work we do inside my program. One of the strategies I teach inside Out of Overwhelm is called Delete, Delegate, and Automate. Automation often makes us think of processes or technology to save time, but today, I’m approaching the automation conversation from a different angle: automating decisions in your life and business.

We’re all familiar with decision fatigue in the design process. Your clients get tired from examining options, weighing pros and cons, and looking at the numbers. The exact same thing happens with you in your daily life and in your business. The more decisions you make, the less effective those decisions become. Tune in this week for the solution.

If you’re ready for an amazing tool that’s going to help free up your time and brain space, this episode is for you. I’m sharing how to use automated decisions to save your highest level of thinking for effective problem-solving, instead of using your mental bandwidth to make decisions about mundane day-to-day aspects of your business.


Out of Overwhelm is my signature six-month program designed to take you from overwhelmed and stressed to profitable, in control, and fulfilled. Applications open in mid-May and we kick off the next round in July 2023, so if you love the topics covered on the podcast, click here to get yourself on the waitlist!

If you loved today’s topic, let’s make sure you never miss an episode. Follow the show now wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you haven’t already, make the time to leave me a rating and review. As a special thank you for taking the time to share your feedback, I’ll send you a little mid-week pick-me-up in the mail, so simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram!


What You’ll Discover from this Episode:

  • How decision fatigue is part of our everyday as entrepreneurs and why it deteriorates the quality of our decisions.

  • Why automating decisions give you more capacity for new information and dealing with new problems.

  • How I automate decisions both in my business and in my personal life.

  • The areas of your business or personal life that you could automate.

  • How to implement automated decisions so you can free up time and brain space to focus on the most important aspects of your life and business.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:


Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, designer, you’re listening to episode 22. This is the one where I’m sharing how to use automated decision making to free up your time and brain space.

Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you’re ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you’re in the right place. I’m Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let’s go.

Hello, hello, welcome back to the podcast. I’m sitting down to record this after getting my workout in this morning and getting the kids off to school. I’m a Peloton fan. I don’t know if any of you are. I’m guessing I’ve got some Peloton fans. But I have to tell you about this. This morning, you know they’ve got the leaderboard on the right side. I was doing a cycling class and one of the leaderboard names was Shelled Peas. Shelled peas. Isn’t that interesting?

It’s one of those times where I wish I could message the person on Peloton and just say, “Could you please tell me how you came up with that name?” I got my Peloton quite a while ago, and I didn’t realize people came up with creative names. So my username is just my name and my first initial of my last name, so really nothing creative at all. And then there was Shelled Peas riding with me.

So anyways, I had to share that, it was just so random. I don’t know about you all, but I have to close out the leaderboard sometimes. Not because I’m so competitive, but because I get so entertained reading people’s names that they come up with and it just ends up being kind of distracting. And then I miss that I’m supposed to be standing up or turning the knob which way. So, anyways, that’s what’s on my mind this morning.

Today we’re going to talk about automated decision making. And before we dive in, I want to give a big thank you to Decorated Interiors, who wrote a review on the podcast. She said, “A bit of calm in my week. Thank goodness Desi has a podcast. This is a fabulous show, which helps me to refocus and remember all the tools I learned during coaching with her.” So thank you so much, Decorated Interiors.

It truly makes my day when I see one of you leave a review on the podcast. It’s so wonderful to know that you’re all enjoying the podcast, and it really is a joy for me to prepare and produce and put out into the world. I would appreciate it if you’re enjoying the podcast to rate and review the show. It not only makes my day, it also really helps me get the word out about the show to other designers and other industry professionals so that more people can start to use this combination of mindset and strategy to really become an empowered CEO.

Decorated Interiors, send me your address over at Instagram, @DesiCreswell, and I want to send you a midweek pick-me-up. Again, that is what I’m doing right now. If you rate and review the show and I give you a shout out, I will send you a little midweek pick-me-up and you will get it in real live mail. I love getting mail, so that’s kind of why I’m doing this.

All right, let’s dive into the topic today. This is going to be a quick one, but super, super impactful. If you’re familiar with my group coaching program, we talk a lot about managing your time effectively. Clients do this with the planner that I’ve created specifically for the program, and then that combination that I was just talking about of mindset with practical strategies that they start to use as soon as they start the program.

One of the strategies that I teach inside Out Of Overwhelm is delete, delegate and automate. We often talk about automating using processes or technology to save you time and mental bandwidth. And these are great time saving approaches, I love them. They also bring clarity to your processes and can start saving you time immediately.

Today I want to take a little different angle on automating and we’re going to be talking about automating decisions in your life and business. I think we’re all familiar with decision fatigue in the design process. Your clients get tired from examining the options, weighing the pros and cons, looking at the numbers, seeing what’s less expensive, more expensive, what’s in budget, what’s out and having to make choices about that.

The exact same thing happens with you in your daily life and in your business. The more decisions you make over the course of the day, the more your ability to make decisions, and the quality of those decisions, deteriorates. More decisions leads to less effective decisions and mental fatigue.

This is why I love to automate decisions as much as possible, so I can use my decision making powers for new information or new problems that come up during my day and things that really require my highest level of thinking, rather than using all of that brain energy to make decisions about mundane things that are just happening day to day.

I automate decisions, both in my business and in my personal life. I want to give you some ideas in both areas so that you can take some of these examples and run with them, or maybe it’ll spark you to come up with some of your own ideas to utilize this concept.

I want to start with examples of automated decisions in your business. A big category for automated decisions in your business are those repeated tasks that you do as a business owner. This could be tasks that you do on a daily basis, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly. This could look like entering your time, scheduling check-ins with your team members at certain times during the day, reviewing your financials, tracking orders, sending client updates, marketing activities, answering emails, you get the idea.

When there’s things that you are consistently doing in your business, it’s really helpful to decide when you are going to do them, whether that’s the day of the week, the time of day, maybe both of those things combined. Then you don’t have to think about it again, you just know that those activities are automatically planned into your week and you can count on doing them and you don’t have to think about when or how.

Another way I like to automate decisions on the calendar is around scheduling blocks of time. So making decisions in advance around the days you have meetings, when you do site visits, when you take consultation or inquiry calls. This is another time saver, not just because of the automated decision process, but also because you can leverage grouping like with like, which is another concept that I teach in Out Of Overwhelm.

Because Out Of Overwhelm is getting ready to open for enrollment in mid-May I have some really great trainings coming up, including one on how to do these scheduled blocks of time to streamline your day and your week that uses my Freedom in the Framework time management approach.

You definitely want to get on my newsletter list, which is Monday Mindset, I’ll have the link in the bio. And that is going to be the way that you can get the information when I send it out about this upcoming workshop, some of the other Q&A opportunities and coaching opportunities I’m going to be doing leading up to the kickoff of Out Of Overwhelm opening up. Get on the list to make sure you don’t miss any of that.

You can also automate when you do your planning. This could be, for example, I always plan my week on Sunday. I also have certain times that I’m reviewing the month and the quarter and planning for the upcoming timeframe. So you can always make decisions about when that’s going to happen so you can get it on your calendar and not have to worry about it.

Another way you can automate decisions is with your timelines. This can be great when you’re thinking about timelines between meetings, or even just what happens when someone reaches out with an initial inquiry. What’s the turnaround time for scheduling something with them? What’s the timeline for providing a proposal?

That way you’re not there on the spot with a client going, “Oh, I know they really want this in a week. But I think it’s probably going to take me more like two weeks. What should I do? I’ll just tell them it’s a week.” Make a decision ahead of time around what your timelines are going to look like for your projects, and then you don’t have to think about it and you can practice being certain and confident in delivering that information to your client.

One last example I’ll give you is sourcing from specific lines. I always think it’s great to have some go-tos of trade resources that you always look at first. And I know we love variety, I totally get it. And also there are those lines that you know have really great quality, they’ve got certain price points that align with your clientele. This is just another way to streamline your decision making process in the design phase.

This will save you time with selections. You’ll also start to purchase more from certain trade sources, which will give you an opportunity to negotiate for better pricing, meaning more profit in your business.

Now, I want to talk about automated decisions in your personal life. One of the big ways that I do automated decisions in my personal life is around meal planning, food prep and laundry. Just to give you an example of what this looks like, I always plan out our meals on Sunday night. And then along with that, I always make a grocery list for Monday shopping.

Grocery shopping always happens on Mondays and Thursdays. And same with laundry, that’s always on Monday and Thursday. So that way, I don’t have to think about it. The meal planning is already done, so when it comes time for later in the week I’ve got a great handle on what things I might need to get. I know the things that we always have in stock in the pantry or in the refrigerator. And I can add those. It’s one less thing to think about.

Another thing that I do is we always have the same meal on Wednesday nights. We always have taco salad Wednesday in our house. And this makes shopping easier, the meal planning easier, it makes it all easier. It’s also something that either one of us can cook.

I typically do all of the cooking because I really do love to cook and come up with recipes and try new things. And also, it’s really nice to have something where if a Wednesday night I’m going to be doing something that might delay the dinner plans, he knows exactly what ingredients we use in taco salad and he can just hop in.

I also automate my workouts. I always work out pretty much at the same time every day. Primarily I work out at home in the mornings before the kids are up so I make sure it gets done. But I also like to go to some barre and Pilates classes during the week.

So I always get those booked in advance. And I know on Mondays and Wednesday mornings I go to barre and on Thursday afternoon I go to Pilates. That way, it’s always in my calendar and I don’t have to think about am I going to go? Am I not going to go? Shoot, I scheduled something at that time, now I’m going to have to reschedule. It just simplifies everything.

Another one is booking haircuts in advance. I don’t know why I took so long to get on board with this idea, but now that I do it, it’s kind of revolutionary. It would always be this thing where I would schedule a haircut on my planner, and then I would just delay it and delay it. And all of a sudden it would be like six months since I’d gotten my hair cut. So now I just make sure that as soon as I have a haircut, I book the next one right away. It makes it so easy.

I do this with Kid birthday gifts. There’s a certain store in our town that I know always has a great selection, they do gift wrapping for $2 for you. And my kids are familiar with what’s in the store. So we have certain games that we often give as gifts. And we know exactly where to go, we know it’s going to be fast to get in and out.

We also automate who does what in the family. So there are certain roles that my husband and I have in terms of responsibilities, and planning, and scheduling. And so this makes it really simple to know that on Tuesdays I don’t ever think about getting the compost out. It’s not something that is ever on my mind because I know that he’s got it. Same thing goes with things that I handle, he knows I have it taken care of. And so we don’t ever have to coordinate or do that negotiation of who’s doing what.

The last example I’ll give you is shopping in the same stores. Now I do branch out sometimes, but for my basics like workout pants, even underwear, which I’m sorry if you think that’s weird I’m sharing that with you, but it’s a great example. I found a certain brand and style that I love. I know the exact size and the exact fit. When I need to restock I just go on Nordstrom, click buy and it’s done.

What I want you to see is that when you automate decision making, it simplifies and streamlines everything for you. It streamlines what you’re doing, your thought process, your planning process. This doesn’t have to take a lot of time, the decision can be quick and it saves you so much time on the back end just from being intentional for a few moments.

Automated decision making frees up your brain space for solving higher level problems. I want to be using my critical thinking skills to help my clients more or to streamline something in my business, or come up with a really amazing free training that I’m going to offer, not be worried about what I’m going to have for dinner tonight or when I’m going to review the monthly financials. I want to have that decided ahead of time.

What this does is it also frees up brain space for just enjoying your day today, before, during and after work. If you don’t have so many thoughts swarming around of when am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? Who’s going to do this? You have so much more bandwidth to be free and present and enjoy.

Automated decision making saves you so much time. I want you to just consider how much time you would get back from shortcutting the debate in your brain and all the back and forth negotiations. This is revolutionary. Now, I don’t want you listening to this episode and thinking, oh, that sounds really great. I’ll think about that some other time. I really want you to take action on this now.

What is one decision you can automate personally or professionally? Think about that right now and make a decision. And then make it happen. I want to hear what automated decisions you’re going to be making. Send me a message on Instagram, @DesiCreswell. I’d love to hear your ideas or how you’re going to be implementing some of the ones I’ve shared here today.

Next week, I’m going to be talking all about a concept I call the confidence continuum. I work with my clients on a lot of different topics like time management, people pleasing, setting boundaries, learning to delegate. All of these are amazing topics, and in the process of working through these issues, clients become more confident, they become empowered in their life and business. And it’s an incredible shift that I get to be a part of as we do the work together.

I can’t wait to dive into that topic. And until then, I’m wishing you a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

I’m going to make the bold assumption that you enjoyed today’s topic. Let’s make sure you never miss an episode; follow the show now wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you’d make the time to leave me a rating and review. This is how I know what you’re loving so I can share more of it.

And it’s also how you can help others find The Interior Design Business CEO. As a thank you for leaving a rating and review, I want to send you a little midweek pick-me-up in the mail. Simply screenshot your review and send me a message on Instagram, @DesiCreswell. I’ll talk to you next week.

Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools, and strategies visit www.desicreswell.com. And if you’re ready to take what you’ve learned on the podcast to the next level, I would love for you to check out my signature group coaching program, Out of Overwhelm.

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23. Two Types of Confidence

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21. Delegating Without Micromanaging