You’re too tired to cook the healthy meal you planned. The exhausted version of you will simply take whatever the easy option already is. The solution: have a backup that doesn’t require a backup decision — frozen vegetables and rotisserie chicken, eggs and toast, a pre-prepped meal from the freezer. Deciding in advance what you will do, and when, has a medium-to-large effect on whether you do it, and it helps most where getting started is the hard part — so name the meal rather than the thing you won’t order.
This companion covers why cooking fatigue leads to poor choices, the backup meal system, building the inventory, the meal prep alternative, and avoiding the delivery trap. (4 min read)
Known defects on this page:
- willpower may not work like a tank that empties Willpower described as a tank that empties, where the research now calls the effect unsettled
- We overuse the em dash in our prose. We use the em dash more often than easy reading allows, and we are changing how we punctuate.
Written by AI, directed and approved by me. How this is made →