The Scientific Reasons Founders and Executives Can’t Think Clearly
(And How to Get Your Edge Back)
Last month, a client told me about attending a sports event for one of her children. She remembers pulling into a parking space, getting a work call, and then…nothing. The next thing she remembers is standing on the sidelines, looking at her phone and feeling alarmed that she had no memory of walking in, saying hello to the other parents, or finding her husband. Her brain had shifted into autopilot, and she hadn’t been consciously paying attention to anything she was doing or saying for several minutes.
What’s worse is that this isn’t the kind of thing someone in her position can easily compare with others to know whether it’s normal. When you rely on your mind to make multi‑million‑dollar decisions, admitting that your brain sometimes feels unreliable is risky in any senior role, and gender bias means women leaders are likely to face even more scrutiny if they do.
Fortunately, we know from neuroscience that this kind of mental fogginess is not usually a sign of cognitive decline or even ADHD. It’s more often evidence that your brain is conserving energy to deal with chronic stress. It’s a common response to the nature of intense leadership roles and actually a sign that your body is working as it was designed to.
However, it’s good that you’re here taking note and paying attention to this signal because it’s also a clear sign that your brain is overloaded. And there are practical steps you can take to support it. Keep reading.
What’s happening in your brain when you feel foggy
Decision Fatigue
All day, you’re making calls, triaging requests, and code-switching between talking to board members, stakeholders, direct reports, and family members. You’re monitoring and responding to a constant stream of emails and answering countless “small” questions. All those tasks draw on the same mental battery.
If that cognitive load is heavy enough, for long enough, the systems that support it will start cutting corners. Your focus will fray, your mind will wander and start to resist deep problem‑solving, and you may find yourself defaulting to “good enough” decisions or quietly dodging difficult calls. Many people tell me, at this stage, that they think they need better time‑management strategies because they keep procrastinating, but what’s happening isn’t procrastination. It’s conservation. Your brain is rationing its effort to deal with unsustainable conditions.
Chronic Stress Mode
The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain where much of your higher‑level thinking happens (planning, prioritizing, weighing trade‑offs), and it is especially sensitive to stress hormones. You’ve probably noticed that short‑term stress can sharpen your instincts and boost your problem‑solving abilities, but under chronic pressure, those same hormones actually weaken connections in your prefrontal cortex, and your flexible, strategic thinking suffers as a result.
Signs that this is happening may include tunnel vision, emotional reactivity, trouble concentrating, or a sense that you can’t quite “see around corners” or put the puzzle pieces together the way you used to.
Stressed By Design
In addition to that biology, most senior roles are structured to maximize (not optimize) cognitive load. Endless days fill up with back‑to‑back-to-back meetings, constant interruptions, and virtually no unscheduled time to think at all.
That reality crowds out any opportunities for reflection or processing, which are some of the brain’s most restorative activities. When every hour of the day is reacting to things outside your control, your brain never gets to shift into the deep, generative work that feeds it, and it’s left feeling depleted.
Of course, there are medical factors that can contribute to brain fog too, like hormonal transitions such as perimenopause, thyroid issues, or sleep disorders. If your symptoms feel sudden, severe, or worrying, it is always worth talking to a healthcare professional as well as looking at how you work.
Why the Typical Stress Management Advice Doesn’t Work
For most overloaded professionals, typical stress management advice often feels like one more thing to do and can even increase your stress levels. Meditate for 20 minutes every morning. Journal every night. Go to the gym three times a week. If building that much time into your schedule were realistic, you probably would not be here looking for stress management advice. Am I right?
Traditional advice also ignores the fact that your capacity is fluid. If you are fighting a cold, preparing to present a rough quarterly report to the people upstairs, or recovering from a fight with your partner, a routine that worked last week could easily push you toward burnout this week.
If you are already experiencing burnout, you can read about my burnout recovery work here.
What works better for most people is something more organic and responsive. It is learning to notice and understand your nervous system’s cues so that you can respond accordingly. It might mean a minute or two of intentional deep breathing after a tough call to slow your stress response and prevent it from accumulating. It might mean blocking an hour of weekly “strategic thinking time” wherever it fits on your calendar this week, instead of forcing yourself to follow a rigid plan no matter what kind of day or week your body is having.
The approach I use with founders and executives
Clarify and build respect for your thought leadership
My work with busy leaders starts with identifying the decisions and high‑value thinking that no one else can do for your role. Then we separate those responsibilities from anything you may be holding onto out of habit, fear, or to compensate for someone else’s underperformance. The aim is to rebuild respect, in yourself and in others, for the work that only you can truly do.
Redesign your week around that thinking
Next, we gradually reshape your calendar, meetings, and decision‑making process so your time aligns with your priorities. That may mean delegating or eliminating low‑leverage decisions, batching and gatekeeping requests, getting more training for underperformers, and creating blocks for deep, reflective work that recharges your brain and resets your stress response. The goal is to design an approach to your work that feels less like firefighting and more like a steady, sustainable rhythm.
Shift out of sprint mode
Finally, we work with your deeper identity and beliefs that tend to drive chronic overworking, especially the parts of you that believe being always available, always in control, always “on” is required. We differentiate between a sprint mentality and a marathon mentality. Sprints are necessary, but they are not sustainable over the long term. You need to be able to upshift for short bursts from time to time, but you also need reliable ways to downshift into a sustainable pace so your nervous system and your thinking can stay sharp over time.
If this sounds familiar
When your brain starts to feel foggy and less reliable, it is natural to want to push harder, hide it, or add more “stress management” to your already packed schedule. You do not have to do any of those things, and in fact, they will likely exacerbate the problem.
What matters right now is simply acknowledging that your current pace is unsustainable, and that there are ways to shift your approach so you can regain your clarity without sacrificing the quality of your work.
You don’t need to wait until something breaks to act. If you recognize yourself in this, I help busy leaders redesign their stress management strategy so their thinking can stay clear, steady, and sharp. You can reach out here to learn more about working together.
