Using Your Values to prevent decision fatigue

The travel nursing life entails making a series of decisions every thirteen weeks: the job, location, timeline, housing, and the logistics involved in getting there. If you do a lot of personal travel on top of that the amount of decisions can start to feel exponential!

I’m a nerd and thoroughly enjoy travel planning. But even I started to experience decision fatigue. A level I trauma hospital in a location I’m not crazy about? My second choice type of unit but for higher pay? Take time off now to volunteer or wait until later in the year?

The decision fatigue improved once I started using my values as a filter for making decisions. Would this job (or relationship or purchase, etc.) either help me or prevent me from living my life around what I value most?

Using your values as a framework - and being firm in them - prevents you from a) bending your values to fit the decision, and b) wasting time agoinzing over something that should be a moot point if it’s a poor fit. 

Nail down your values so you can recite them like your phone number. 

The next time you have a decision to make ask yourself: does this make me compromise even one of the things that are deeply important to me?