You wake up already thinking.
If your mornings already feel heavy, you can read more about why waking up clear is so difficult and how to fix it.
-> Why It’s Hard to Wake Up in the Morning
What is due today.
Which email to answer first.
What to do about that meeting.
Whether to work on the big project or the urgent request.
By the time you sit down at your desk, half your mental energy has gone into deciding what to work on, not actually doing the work.
This is decision fatigue.
Not a personal weakness, but a structural problem: too many choices, made too late, with too little energy left.
A simple way to cut it down is to move decisions out of the morning.
A simple 10-minute night planning routine can reduce decision fatigue and give your best hours back to real work.
What Decision Fatigue Really Does to Your Day
Decision fatigue is the gradual decline in the quality of your decisions after a long session of choices.
Studies on judges, doctors, and consumers show the same pattern: as decision load increases, people default to the easiest option, delay, or avoid decisions altogether. One well-known study of Israeli parole boards found that favorable rulings dropped sharply as judges worked through long sessions, a classic example of decision fatigue in real life. Mental effort drops before time does.
In daily life, decision fatigue looks like this:
- You jump between tasks because you did not decide the order.
- You say yes to requests you do not have capacity for.
- You open a document, stare at it, then check email instead.
- Your afternoon food choices become more impulsive and less deliberate.
None of this comes from laziness.
It comes from starting the day with a full queue of unmade decisions.
Experimental work on decision making and self-control shows that long sequences of choices reduce later persistence, task quality, and self-control.
The core idea is simple:
Think about your work when your brain is tired.
Do your work when your brain is fresh.
Night planning uses this asymmetry on purpose.
For a clear overview of how decision fatigue shows up in everyday life, see this short explainer.
Why Planning at Night Works Better Than Planning in the Morning
Most people try to “get organized” in the morning.
Coffee, notebook, to-do list, maybe a productivity app.
The problem is that planning itself costs mental energy.
When you plan in the morning:
- You spend your clearest time choosing, not executing.
- You are more sensitive to inboxes, notifications, and other people’s priorities.
- Small uncertainties (“Should I do A or B first?”) create friction before you start.
When you plan at night:
- The day’s context is still active in your mind.
- The cost of planning is lower, because you were not going to do deep work at 11 p.m. anyway.
- You can sleep on a clear agenda instead of a mental queue.
The goal is not a perfect plan.
The goal is to remove as many decisions as possible from tomorrow morning.
The 10-Minute Night Planning Routine
This routine has one job:
Turn tomorrow from a list of possibilities into a short script.
Set a timer for 10 minutes. Use pen and paper, a note app, or your task manager. No need for a complex system.
1. Choose Tomorrow’s “Big 3”
First, decide on three outcomes that would make tomorrow feel worthwhile.
Not three tasks, but three results.
Examples:
- “Draft introduction and first section of report.”
- “Review and respond to all client A emails.”
- “Finalize travel dates and book tickets.”
Write them as finished states, not vague actions like “work on project.”
These Big 3 will be the spine of your day.
2. Block a Focus Window for the Hardest One
Next, protect your best energy.
- Look at your calendar.
- Find a 90-minute window where you can work with minimal interruptions.
- Reserve it—mentally or literally—as focus time for the single hardest Big 3 item.
This pairs naturally with a deep work block if you already use one.
If your schedule is full of fixed meetings, even 45 minutes of protected time is better than none. The point is to decide when you will handle the hardest work before the day begins.
3. Decide “Good Enough” for Each Big 3
Decision fatigue often hides inside perfectionism.
So you define “done” before you start.
For each Big 3, write one sentence:
- “Good enough = 800 rough words, not edited.”
- “Good enough = all major questions answered, no perfect formatting.”
- “Good enough = three options picked, not fully researched.”
Now tomorrow’s decisions shift from
“Is this perfect yet?”
to
“Does this match the threshold I set last night?”
4. Pre-Commit the First 10 Minutes of Your Day
The first 10 minutes of work decide the tone.
Right now, those minutes usually go to email or messages because they are easy to open and do not require a plan.
Instead, set a micro-script for those 10 minutes:
- “Open project document, read yesterday’s paragraph, write one new paragraph.”
- “Open calendar, review today’s meetings, confirm Big 3 still stand, then start Focus Window task.”
- “Clear desk, close browser, open editor, and write bullet points for report section.”
Write this mini-sequence down.
Tomorrow morning, you follow it without thinking. No choice, just execution.
5. Reduce Morning Friction: Layout, Tools, and Logistics
The final step is physical and boring, which is why it works.
In the last 2–3 minutes:
- Lay out what you need for the first task (notebook, laptop, charger, reference documents).
- Close unrelated browser tabs and windows.
- If you work from home, prepare your workspace so you can sit and start immediately.
You are not trying to optimize your entire day.
You are removing excuses from the first 30–60 minutes.
How This Routine Cuts Decision Fatigue
This 10-minute process removes decisions at several levels.
- What matters today?
→ Answered by the Big 3. - When will I do the hardest thing?
→ Answered by the blocked focus window. - When is this task “good enough”?
→ Answered by pre-defined thresholds. - What do I do first tomorrow?
→ Answered by the first 10-minute script. - Where and how do I start?
→ Answered by the prepared workspace.
By the time you wake up, the only remaining decision is
“Will I follow the script I already wrote?”
That is a lighter question than inventing the script from scratch.
If you notice your focus crashing in the afternoon even after good planning, see my breakdown of simple fixes for the afternoon slump.
-> Afternoon Slump: 5 Simple Fixes
What If My Schedule Is Unpredictable?
Many jobs do not allow rigid control of the day. Meetings appear, requests escalate, emergencies happen.
In these cases, night planning shifts aim:
- From trying to control the full schedule
- To making sure one or two important things happen despite the chaos.
Adjustments for unpredictable days:
- Set Big 1 instead of Big 3. One non-negotiable outcome.
- Look for micro-windows: 3 blocks of 20–30 minutes instead of one long block.
- Keep the first 10-minute script, but accept that the rest may move.
The principle stays the same: pre-decide what matters while your brain is tired, so you can execute faster when you finally get a clear window.
How This Connects to Evening Shutdown and Sleep
A side effect of night planning is that it doubles as a shutdown ritual.
- The brain offloads open loops onto paper.
- You stop rehearsing tomorrow’s tasks in your head.
- Sleep comes easier because the plan lives outside your mind.
If you already use an evening shutdown routine, your 10-minute planning can sit inside it:
- Review today’s work and close loops.
- Capture thoughts for later.
- Run the 10-minute plan for tomorrow.
- Step away from work devices.
Decision fatigue shrinks now,
and tomorrow morning starts with fewer loose threads.
And if your weekends keep pushing your sleep schedule out of sync, my article on social jetlag explains how weekend sleep habits wreck weekday energy.
-> Social Jetlag: How Weekend Sleep Habits Destroy
Summary: Use Tired Time to Protect Fresh Time
Decision fatigue is not about being weak.
It is about asking your brain to make too many choices at the wrong time of day.
A 10-minute night planning routine gives you:
- Three clear outcomes for tomorrow.
- A protected window for the hardest work.
- A simple script for the first 10 minutes.
- A workspace that invites action, not delay.
You do the thinking when you are tired,
so you can do the real work when you are not.
Tonight’s job is simple:
write down tomorrow’s first 10 minutes before you go to bed.
Q1. Won’t planning every night add more decision fatigue instead of reducing it?
A. Planning does use mental energy, but it uses low-quality evening energy to protect high-quality morning energy. You are simply moving decisions to a time when you are less capable of deep work anyway. The routine is also short and structured: same steps, same questions. After a week, it feels more like a checklist than a fresh set of decisions.
Q2. What if my plans always change the next day?
A. Plans are not contracts; they are defaults. When something more important appears, you can still adjust. The value of night planning is that you start from a clear default instead of chaos. Even if only 60–70% of your plan survives, that portion will be more focused and intentional than before.
Q3. How is this different from writing a to-do list?
A. A standard to-do list collects tasks without structure. Night planning forces three extra moves: choosing the Big 3 outcomes, deciding when to tackle the hardest one, and defining “good enough” in advance. These choices reduce friction the moment you start working, which a long, unprioritized list does not.