THE NO-DECISION MENU
Remove food decisions from your week
These are default recipes you can plug into your schedule.
I picked these so you don’t have to think about it.
Breakfast:
Make Ahead Breakfast Bowls - Easy option you could add to your go-to breakfast meal, that plugs into your week smoothly.
Lunch:
Creamy Tuscan Chicken - This meal is easy to make and provides some level of comfort food feeling, without being too unhealthy.
Dinner:
Chicken & Tortilla Tortellini Soup - Soup is an easy weeknight dinner option, that is easy to make enough for leftovers.
THE SYSTEM
3:00 AM shifts were part of my life in the Coast Guard for years.
Feeding 150–200 people required an operational mindset.
That meant no decisions being made in the morning.
Only systems that could run while half asleep.
Breakfast was decided months in advance, since I had to stock enough inventory for long deployments.
That’s where I learned this:
Breakfast should never be a decision.
By the end of this email, you’ll understand the No-Decision Breakfast System I used at scale, and still use today for my household of two.
The main problem:
If you wake up without breakfast planned, you start your day with a decision:
“What’s for breakfast?”
That decision slows everything down before your day even begins.
Things like:
Morning workouts
Your side hustle
Time with your family
You’re already spending mental energy before doing anything meaningful.
Last week I got a new dog right after coming back from a week away in Wyoming. It was an incredible trip seeing national parks, and the new dog was pretty cool right off the bat.
But I made one fatal error.
I didn’t plan ahead properly for that first week of breakfasts.
So now I’m:
Managing two dogs figuring each other out
Tired from travel and elevation
Solo at home while my wife left for a work trip
And every morning…
It sounds small, but it added friction to everything.
The start of my week felt slow and unproductive.
The Shift:
Wednesday night, I finally got to the grocery store.
Grabbed my staples. Prepped a few breakfasts.
Fast forward to Thursday morning.
If you know Marvel, it felt like I had all the infinity stones.
All before logging on to my 9-5.
Same person, just no breakfast decisions.
Use the No-Decision Breakfast System:
Step 1) Pick 1-2 breakfasts that you can cook with your eyes closed and make the grocery list in your sleep.
My go-to breakfast options are overnight oatmeal or yogurt parfaits.
Step 2) Build your grocery list around these meals. If some ingredients are staple items, you can plan to keep them on hand 24/7.
But every week when you go to the grocery store, understand you’ll restock on any ingredients needed to make these meals. No matter what.
Step 3) Eat them on repeat. Every single weekday for breakfast.
Save your creativity in the kitchen for weekends or vacation.
Shift your mindset:
Repetition is not boring, it’s efficient and you should save decision-making for things that matter.
The outcome will be:
zero friction in the morning
more mental energy early in the day (that lasts)
better focus and clarity on real work
If you want to try this:
Reply to this email with 1 breakfast you’ll use this week.
WHENEVER YOU’RE READY
Here’s how I can help:
1) YouTube Channel — Binge my best videos on reducing decision fatigue by building a repeatable meal plan.
2) Previous Newsletters — Read all of my previous meal planning system breakdowns.
3) Apply to the Meal Planning OS Founding Program — I’m opening up a small founding group to build the first version.
Your Saturday system reset, same time next week.
— Steven
