Episode 55 - Start Doing, Stop Deciding: How AI Prioritizes Your Day So You Don't Have To
Welcome to Episode 55 of the Time for Living Podcast!
TRANSCRIPT
show notes
You know that moment when you finally sit down to work, and instead of actually working, you spend twenty minutes just trying to figure out what to do first? By the time you decide, you're already exhausted. Here's the truth: every minute you spend in decision paralysis is a minute stolen from the work that actually builds your business. This episode is about getting those minutes back using AI to prioritize your tasks so you can stop deciding and start doing.
What You'll Learn
How decision fatigue is stealing your most productive hours (and why mom entrepreneurs hit it harder than anyone else)
The Decision-Free Day Method™: A simple 3-step framework that takes 3 minutes to eliminate daily priority decisions
Why AI is better at objective prioritization than your tired 6am brain—and how to use it without fancy tools or subscriptions
12 copy-paste prompts for daily planning, fragmented time blocks, emergency re-prioritization, and guilt-free "skip it" lists
How to turn a 60-second brain dump into a complete prioritized plan tailored to your actual energy, time, and business goals
By the end of this episode, you'll have a clear action step you can implement tomorrow morning to reclaim hours of productive time every week.
The Decision-Free Day Method™
A 3-step process (Brain Dump + Context Questions + AI Prioritization) that eliminates decision fatigue and gives you a clear, personalized work plan in under 3 minutes.
FREE RESOURCE
Want the exact AI prompts I mentioned? Download the Decision-Free Day Toolkit with 12 copy-paste prompts for every scenario at timeforliving.co/toolkit
Let’s Connect:
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timeforlivingco/
• Email: hello@timeforliving.co
Final Thought:
You're building something real in the middle of a very full life—now go get your day back.
TRANSCRIPT - Start Doing, Stop Deciding: How AI Prioritizes Your Day So You Don't Have To
Why You're Exhausted Before You Even Start Working
You know that moment right after you drop the kids at school—or maybe it's 6am before anyone's awake—when you finally sit down at your laptop with your coffee, and instead of working, you just... freeze?
You've got this massive to-do list. Maybe you scribbled it on a post-it note, or it's living in seventeen places—your phone, a notebook, that random Google doc. You know you should work on that client proposal. But also your inbox has 143 unread messages. And didn't you promise yourself you'd finally post something on Instagram today? Oh, and wait—when is that invoice due? Did you already send it?
So you start opening tabs. You check email. You scroll your to-do list. You rewrite your to-do list. You look at Instagram for "just a second" to get inspired.
Twenty minutes later, you haven't actually done anything except decide what you should do. And now you're tired.
If you just felt that in your chest, this episode is for you.
Welcome to Time For Living, the podcast for mom entrepreneurs who are building real businesses in the margins of real life. I'm your host, and today we're talking about the invisible productivity killer that's stealing your morning momentum: decision fatigue.
But we're not just talking about the problem. We're walking through exactly how to use AI to prioritize your tasks so you never waste another morning deciding what to work on.
If you're listening while packing lunches or driving to drop-off or folding that laundry that's been sitting in the basket for two days, you're in the right place. This is going to change how tomorrow morning feels.
The Hidden Cost of Decision Fatigue for Mom Entrepreneurs
Let's talk about what's really happening here.
You probably know that decision fatigue is real. You've heard that Obama wore the same suit every day to preserve his decision-making energy for important stuff. Cool story, but you're not the president—you're trying to run a business while also remembering it's pajama day at school and you need to defrost chicken for dinner.
Here's what nobody talks about: as a mom entrepreneur, you're not just making business decisions. You're making micro-decisions all day long.
What should I work on first? Is this email worth responding to now? Should I finish this project or start that one? Is this task urgent or just loud? Does this move me forward or just keep me busy?
And that's just your business. We're not even counting the 300 decisions you made before 9 AM about breakfast, outfits, permission slips, and whether that cough sounds like a stay-home-from-school cough.
I read a study a while back that said the average adult makes about 35,000 decisions per day. I'm pretty sure mom entrepreneurs hit that by noon.
The result? By the time you sit down to work, your decision-making tank is already half empty. So you procrastinate. You do the easy stuff. You rearrange your to-do list for the fourth time this week. You convince yourself that reorganizing your email folders counts as productivity.
It's not that you're lazy. It's not that you lack discipline. Your brain is literally exhausted from deciding.
What If You Never Had to Decide What to Work On?
Here's what I want you to consider—and I know this might sound too simple, but stay with me because this is where it gets interesting.
What if you never had to decide what to work on next?
And I don't mean in a "just be more organized" way or a "time block everything on Sunday" way. Those strategies are fine, but they still require you to make all the decisions upfront. You're still carrying the mental load of figuring out what matters most.
I'm talking about actually outsourcing the decision itself to something that can think through it faster and more objectively than your exhausted brain can at 6am.
This is where AI comes in. And look, if you just thought "oh great, another tech thing I don't have time to learn," I get it. I really do.
But here's what I've watched happen over the last six months with mom entrepreneurs who've tried this: they're not learning complicated AI systems. They're using AI the same way they'd text a really organized friend and ask, "okay, I've got two hours and ten things to do—what should I tackle first?"
What if every morning, you spent sixty seconds doing a brain dump of everything on your plate, and AI came back thirty seconds later and said: "Here's what you're doing today, in this order, and here's exactly why it matters for your business right now."
No second-guessing. No analysis paralysis. No spending half your work time planning your work time.
Just: open laptop, look at your plan, start with task one.
This is what I call the Decision-Free Day Method, and it's honestly the simplest way I've seen mom entrepreneurs reclaim hours every single week.
Introducing the Decision-Free Day Method™
Okay, let me walk you through how this actually works.
The Decision-Free Day Method has three simple parts: Brain Dump, Context Questions, and AI Prioritization. That's it.
You didn't start your business to spend half your work time deciding what to work on. This is exactly how to use AI to prioritize your tasks without spending all morning thinking about what to do.
Part One: Brain Dump
Every morning—or the night before if you're a planner—you spend sixty seconds listing everything that's on your mind for work. And I mean everything. Client emails. Content creation. That course module you're building. The invoice you need to send. Updating your website copy. All of it.
You're not organizing it. You're not deciding what's important. You're just getting it out of your head and into a document or a voice note or wherever you keep things.
Part Two: Context Questions
This is the part that makes AI actually useful instead of just generic. You answer three quick questions:
What's my biggest business goal right now? (Maybe it's launching a program, landing three new clients, or growing your email list to 500.)
How much focused time do I actually have today? (Be honest. If you have two hours between school drop-off and pickup, say two hours. If you have four 30-minute pockets, say that.)
What's my energy level and what kind of work matches that? (Are you fresh and ready for deep work? Tired and better suited for admin tasks? Be real.)
Part Three: AI Prioritization
You take your brain dump and your three context answers, and you paste them into your AI tool of choice—ChatGPT, Claude, whatever you use—with a simple prompt like:
"Based on my goal, my available time, and my energy level, prioritize this list and tell me what to do first, second, and third. Explain why."
In less than ten seconds, you get back a prioritized plan that's actually tailored to your real life today.
Not a perfect plan. Not a guru's plan. Your plan.
Real Example: From Overwhelmed to Clear in 60 Seconds
Let me show you what this looks like in real life.
Let's say it's Tuesday morning. You've got two and a half hours before school pickup. Here's your brain dump:
Finish draft of client proposal
Post on Instagram (haven't posted in four days)
Respond to seven emails
Record podcast episode
Update website services page
Send invoice to May client
Research podcast guest for next month
Okay, that's a lot. In the old way of doing things, you'd probably start with email because it feels urgent, then get distracted by Instagram because you feel guilty, then realize you've burned an hour and haven't touched the proposal.
Now let's add context. Your biggest goal right now is landing two new clients this month. You have two and a half hours of focused time. Your energy is pretty good—you had coffee, the house is quiet, you're ready for something that requires thinking.
You paste this into AI with your simple prompt.
Here's what comes back in about ten seconds:
"Start with the client proposal. Give it ninety minutes. This is the thing that directly supports your goal of landing new clients, and it needs your best thinking. You've got the energy for it right now—use it.
Next, send that invoice. Five minutes, tops. Quick money task, gets it off your mental list.
Then spend twenty minutes on emails, but only the client-related ones. Everything else can wait until tomorrow.
And here's what to skip today: Instagram, podcast recording, website updates, guest research. None of these move you closer to landing clients this week. Batch them for Friday when you're planning content anyway."
Do you feel that? That exhale?
You're not wondering anymore. You're not second-guessing. You're not feeling guilty about Instagram because AI just told you it's not the priority today—and it explained why.
In the old way, you would've started with email because it felt urgent, then jumped to Instagram because you felt guilty, then looked up and realized you burned ninety minutes and the proposal is still sitting there untouched. And now you're stressed because pickup is in forty-five minutes.
This way? You got the proposal done. That's real progress.
Why This Method Works for Interrupted Schedules
Here's why this method is so powerful for those of us building businesses around family life.
First, it works with interrupted schedules. You're not trying to follow some rigid time-blocking system that falls apart the second your kid stays home sick. Every morning is a new plan based on your actual reality that day.
Second, it removes the guilt. When AI tells you to skip Instagram today because it doesn't serve your current goal, that's permission. You're not being lazy—you're being strategic.
Third, it protects your energy for the work that actually matters. You're not wasting your best morning focus deciding what to do. You're using it to do the thing.
And fourth—this is big—it gets smarter the more you use it. As you see what AI recommends and how those tasks actually move your business forward, you start to internalize that prioritization logic. You're not just outsourcing decisions—you're training yourself to make better ones.
Your Questions Answered: What If AI Gets It Wrong?
I know some of you are thinking: "But what if AI gets it wrong?"
Fair question. Here's the thing—AI isn't perfect, but it's way better at objective prioritization than your tired brain at 6am.
And here's what I love: you can challenge it. If AI says to do the proposal first but your gut says the invoice is more urgent because you need that payment to clear, you can ask: "What if I do the invoice first—does that change the plan?" AI will give you a new sequence.
You're still in control. You're just not carrying the weight of figuring it all out alone.
Another question: "Don't I need fancy AI tools or subscriptions?"
Nope. The free version of ChatGPT or Claude works perfectly fine for this. Learning how to use AI to prioritize tasks isn't complicated—it's literally one question and one list. You don't need complicated automations or integrations. Just a place to paste your brain dump and get back a plan.
"What if I don't have time for a brain dump every morning?"
Then do it the night before. Or do it once on Sunday for the whole week and just adjust daily based on what actually happened. This method is flexible. It works for how you work.
Advanced Strategies: Taking the Decision-Free Day Further
Once you get comfortable with the basic Decision-Free Day Method, you can layer in some really powerful upgrades.
For example, you can ask AI to map your tasks to specific times based on when you work best. "I'm most creative from 9 to 11 AM but better at admin after lunch—organize my priorities around that."
You can ask it to identify which tasks you could delegate or delete entirely. "Looking at this list, what could I batch, automate, or eliminate?"
You can even ask it to plan your week. "Here are my top three business goals for the month and everything on my plate this week. Create a five-day plan that balances progress with realistic time constraints."
When you remove the decision, you remove the delay. And that's where momentum lives.
One mom entrepreneur I know uses this method every Sunday night. She does a ten-minute brain dump of the week ahead, asks AI to organize it by her goals and available time, and then she's done. Monday morning, she knows exactly where to start.
She told me she used to spend hours every week just planning her week. Now she spends ten minutes and gets better results.
Every Minute in Decision Paralysis Is a Minute Stolen From Your Business
Here's what I really want you to hear today.
Every minute you spend in decision paralysis is a minute stolen from the work that actually builds your business.
You didn't start your business so you could spend half your work time deciding what to work on. You started it to create something meaningful, to build flexibility into your life, to do work that matters.
The Decision-Free Day Method isn't about being more productive for productivity's sake. It's about protecting your limited time and energy so you can show up fully for the work that counts—and still have space left for your family, for yourself, for life.
Here's what I want you to remember: Decision-free doesn't mean directionless. It means you've handed the exhausting part—the prioritizing, the analyzing, the should-I-or-shouldn't-I—over to a tool that can do it in ten seconds.
When you stop deciding and start doing, everything shifts. Your days feel clearer. Your progress feels real. You stop going to bed at night wondering why you were busy all day but can't point to anything that actually moved your business forward.
Try This Tomorrow: Your 60-Second Action Step
So here's your action step, and you can do this tonight or first thing tomorrow.
Take sixty seconds—literally set a timer—and dump out everything on your work plate. Everything. Don't organize it, don't prioritize it, just get it out of your head.
Then answer three quick questions:
What's my biggest business goal right now?
How much actual work time do I have today?
What's my energy like—am I fresh or am I running on fumes?
Then open ChatGPT or Claude, and here's what you say—you can literally copy this:
"I'm a mom entrepreneur. Here's my to-do list: [paste it]. My main goal right now is [your goal]. I have [your time] to work today and my energy is [high, medium, or low]. Tell me what to do first, second, and third, and why it matters."
That's it. Hit send. You'll get back a prioritized plan in less time than it took you to read that paragraph.
Try it for just one day. See how it feels to show up to work and already know what you're doing.
And if you want my exact AI prompts for this—plus prompts for weekly planning, email prioritization, and content batching—I've put together a free guide called the Decision-Free Day Toolkit. I'll link it in the show notes. timeforliving.co/toolkit Grab it, use it, see what happens.
The Best System Is the One That Fits Your Life
Before we wrap up, I want to acknowledge something.
If you're listening to a podcast about productivity, you're probably someone who's always looking for the next strategy, the next system, the thing that's finally going to make it all work.
And I get it. I've been there. I've tried all the planners and the methods and the morning routines.
But here's the truth: the best productivity system is the one that actually fits your life. Not someone else's life. Yours.
The Decision-Free Day Method works because it's fast, it's flexible, and it removes the hardest part—the decision itself.
You don't have to be perfect at it. You don't have to do it every single day. You just have to try it and see if it gives you back even a little bit of your time and mental space.
And if it does? Keep doing it.
You're building something real in the middle of a very full life. You deserve tools that make that easier, not harder.
Thanks for listening to Time For Living and if you try the Decision-Free Day Method, I'd love to know how it goes.
I'll see you next week with another episode about building your business without sacrificing your life.
Now go open that AI tool and get your day back.