Your brain was never meant to handle this much input
Can I tell you about the toothbrush?
A few years back, I walked into a department store with one singular, uncomplicated goal: buy a new toothbrush. That’s it. No big life decisions, no competing priorities. Just a toothbrush. I’m a little particular about my teeth (fine, more than a little; I’ve never wanted to go full Ross Geller with the blinding white situation, but a nice, natural smile? Always.), so I figured this would take me all of five minutes. Then, I could get back to shopping with my sister. Simple enough, right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong.
I turned the corner into the dental care aisle and stopped dead. It was as if every toothbrush that had ever existed in the history of oral hygiene had gathered together for one final reunion, and they had chosen that aisle, on that day, to do it. Soft bristles, hard bristles, softish-hardish bristles (I am not making this up), medium-soft, crisscross, rounded, tapered head, battery-powered, manually powered, all-in-one, not all-in-one. My eyes glazed over. My head started swimming. I could hear my own internal monologue getting louder and more frantic: Trisha’s waiting. Hurry up. Just PICK one. What is WRONG with you? It’s a TOOTHBRUSH.
I left that aisle without a toothbrush. Defeated. Slightly hollow inside. Eventually, I found my sister, explained my ordeal, and she, bless her, marched back into that aisle like a woman who had somewhere to be, reached for the first battery-powered option her eyes landed on, and handed it to me. Done. We were out of there.
I have thought about that moment more times than I can count. Because it wasn’t really about the toothbrush, was it?
We were not designed for so many decisions
Here’s what I find fascinating, and also quietly infuriating: the sheer volume of choices we’re expected to navigate every single day didn’t get here by accident.
Somewhere along the line, more became the default. More versions. More upgrades. More opinions. More tabs open in your browser and in your brain. Every store, app, platform, and algorithm now asks you to compare options constantly. Toothpaste. Streaming services. Vitamins. Productivity systems. Dinner recipes. Shampoo. Even rest somehow comes with recommendations now. There is no real stopping point to it. If something can be expanded, optimized, customized, upgraded, or turned into content, it usually is.
And the cost of all of it lands squarely on you.
There’s actually a name for what I experienced in that aisle. Decision fatigue is the very real, very documented phenomenon where the quality of your decisions deteriorates the more decisions you have to make. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how organized, or how together you appear on the outside. The mental energy required to evaluate options is finite. Use it up on toothbrushes in aisle seven, and you have less of it left for the things that actually matter to you. By the time you sit down at the end of the day, your brain isn’t tired because you’re weak. It’s tired because it’s been quietly running a marathon since before you finished your first cup of coffee.
And this hits differently when you’re in the middle years of your life, carrying the particular kind of mental load that doesn’t get talked about enough. It’s not just toothbrushes. It’s the mental tabs you keep open for everyone else. It’s the emotional labour of anticipating needs, managing logistics, holding the invisible architecture of a household, a family, or a career, or all three together. It’s the notifications and the decisions and the options and the voices telling you there’s a better way to do the thing you’re already doing adequately. That’s not just decision fatigue. That’s years of it, compounding quietly, with nobody naming it.
The quiet toll of too much everything
I want to gently push back on the idea that the solution is to simply get better at deciding. To be more decisive. More efficient. Be more strategic about your choices so they don’t wear you out. That framing puts the problem back on you, which… no.
The problem is the volume. The problem is the relentlessness of it. The problem is that even your leisure time now requires a series of micro-decisions (what to watch, which app, which playlist, which restaurant, which version of the recipe, which of the forty-seven opinions about how to raise your children or manage your hormones or optimize your sleep is the correct one this week). There’s no quiet corner anymore where your brain just gets to… rest. Not really.
I’ve noticed that the more I’ve simplified certain areas of my life, the more my nervous system visibly exhales. Not in a life-overhaul kind of way. In a very small, almost boring kind of way. I buy the same few things. I return to the same places. I don’t audition new options unless I genuinely need to. It’s not exciting. It’s deeply, wonderfully calming.
What actually helps (and it is not a ten-step plan)
The concept I keep coming back to is KIS. Keep It Simple. The version of this that has worked for me, and that I’d offer as a genuine suggestion rather than a prescription, is this: find your personal defaults and protect them.
That means identifying the handful of products, routines, places, and decisions that already work for you, and consciously choosing to stop re-evaluating them. Not because you’re being lazy, but because the energy you save by not agonizing over your shampoo or your grocery list or your coffee order is energy you get to spend on something that actually deserves your full attention. You’re not settling. You’re reclaiming bandwidth.
The other thing I’d say, and this one has been an unexpectedly significant shift, is the value of smaller, quieter spaces. Whether that’s a local shop where the selection isn’t designed to overwhelm you, a smaller community where the noise is lower, or even just a single drawer in your house that is organized and calm and stays that way. When your eyes land on something simple and orderly, your nervous system registers it. It matters more than we give it credit for.
A small tool if you need one right now
If you’re at the point where you feel like you can’t make one more decision today, not a big one, not a small one, not even what to have for dinner, I want you to know that’s not a personal failing. That’s a completely reasonable response to an unreasonable amount of input. Your brain is not broken. It’s just full.
If it would help to have a few fewer decisions to make today, I created something for exactly that. The Gentle Defaults Deck is a set of 20 calming cards filled with small shortcuts, ready-made defaults, and low-pressure ideas designed to quiet mental overload and make everyday life feel a little lighter. You can find it in The Gentle Reset shop.
You don’t have to figure all of this out today
The toothbrush story still makes me laugh, honestly. But it also makes me a little tender toward the version of me standing in that aisle, genuinely overwhelmed by something that was supposed to be simple, feeling embarrassed about it, talking herself through it like she was failing a test. She wasn’t failing anything. She was just a person with a tired brain in a world that keeps adding more.
If that sounds familiar, I see you. Maybe the answer isn’t becoming better at handling all of the noise. Maybe the answer is wanting less of it. To find your defaults. To let your sister pick the toothbrush sometimes.
And maybe to skip the giant department store altogether when you can get away with it.
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