The Create Your Day Podcast

101. Brain Bankruptcy: Why You Can't Focus

• Jenn Cody • Season 1 • Episode 101

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Ever hit that 3 PM wall where your brain seemingly shuts down and productivity nosedives? I spent years thinking this was just an energy problem, throwing coffee and snacks at it with minimal results. But through working with clients and examining my own patterns, I discovered something revolutionary: what we're experiencing isn't primarily an energy crash—it's decision fatigue.

Your brain has a finite capacity for making decisions each day. By mid-afternoon, most of us have depleted that resource on hundreds of low-stakes choices—what to wear, what to eat, which email to answer first, how to respond to that meeting request. When we finally get to the strategic work that actually moves our business forward, our decision-making muscle is exhausted.

This revelation came while working with a restaurant owner who, despite excellent sleep and nutrition habits, still crashed every evening. After analyzing her schedule, we realized she was burning through her decision-making capacity on trivial matters before tackling important work. Sound familiar? I was doing the same thing—wasting my prime cognitive hours on decisions that didn't matter, then wondering why I couldn't focus on strategic planning later in the day.

The solution transformed both our workdays: automating routine decisions, time-blocking high-stakes work during peak cognitive hours, creating standard responses for common situations, and developing clear criteria for opportunities. Within three weeks, my client reported feeling focused throughout her entire day, not just during former "slump" times.

If you're experiencing that mid-day crash, it's not a character flaw or lack of willpower—it's feedback from your brain that you need more clarity around priorities. The people who seem to have endless focus aren't superhuman; they're simply better at managing their decisions. Ready to reclaim your afternoons? Start by mapping your decision points and protecting your peak hours for what truly matters in your business.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Create your Day podcast. My name is Jen Cody, I am your host and your business strategist bestie. So I want to talk to you guys today about something that happens to me or was happening to me, I should say, really, really often and it's the 3 pm crash. For me it's 3 pm, and I know that's kind of cliche, right. We talk about, like, people who get to three o'clock in the afternoon and they just need a little pick me up, and so I didn't really think there was anything wrong with the fact that I would get sluggish around that time of day, and I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about, even if for you it's not 3 pm. Maybe it's happening earlier in the day or later in the day. But we start our day with really good intentions, right, our morning routine down pat, we're focused, we're productive, we're powering through morning tasks, feeling like we're crushing it. And then for me I would get to about 3 o'clock sometimes earlier, actually, like around 2 o'clock, and I would feel like I just hit this brick wall. My brain shuts off. If there was something that seemed urgent earlier in the day, it does not seem urgent anymore. It doesn't even seem manageable. It's like impossible for me to focus on, and I would find myself staring at my computer, going from tab to tab to tab, trying to find, like, what's going to spark my energy. Maybe I would take a social media break, thinking it's only going to be for a minute, and then we all know how that goes. You know, 30 minutes later I'm looking down some rabbit hole on Instagram. And my solution for this was to do a few different things. Maybe I would make some coffee, maybe I would have a snack, like a yogurt, something like that. Maybe I would take the dog for a walk. I would do something to kind of remove myself from what I was doing and then come back to it, thinking that this was magically going to make me feel focused again.

Speaker 1:

And then I realized, through a conversation with a really, really good colleague of mine, that I didn't think this was about energy anymore. Colleague of mine that I didn't think this was about energy anymore, and so let me tell you the story. So I was talking with one of my really good clients and really good friend also. She owns a restaurant, and in my conversations with her I realized that she was having the same thing like just pumping herself full of coffee every single day to try and get through the day, and I was always kind of referring to this as this 3 pm slump, like that's just what happens With her. It would be a little bit later in the day because her days were much longer right in the restaurant business. She's there until 10 o'clock at night. So this would happen like 6 o'clock 7 o'clock. She's in this slump and feeling like I just need the day to be over.

Speaker 1:

And it wasn't until we started working on what her day actually looked like that we realized what the issue was. And she was frustrated, right, because she's telling me Jen, I'm getting all the sleep that I need, I eat well, I take care of myself, I exercise. Why am I not able to power through this? So I started asking her about how she was spending her morning and there were a lot of decisions that were happening in her day and every single decision that she was making, from the time she woke up until this slump, was really important. Right, there were to her. At that moment she was thinking about, like, what do I wear to work today? What am I going to have for breakfast? What? Let me sit down and answer some emails, let me pay some bills, let me figure out whether or not I have calls that I have to reschedule this morning. What's the next project I want to do? What do I want to get done before I get to the restaurant? And we realized as we started talking more about this that all of her decision making that was happening before she got to work was on things that were not moving the needle forward for her at work or at the restaurant. So she wasn't really experiencing an energy crash. In my opinion, it was a little bit more like decision fatigue. And this happens a lot of the time in business because our brain really does have a finite amount of decision-making capacity each day. So if you're like most people out there running a business, you're burning through that capacity before you even think about working on what's really important.

Speaker 1:

So right now, if you're listening, think about your typical morning. When you wake up, you immediately start making decisions. Right? What time are you going to get up in the morning? Setting the alarm the night before? Decisions right. What time are you going to get up in the morning? Setting the alarm the night before? We all hit snooze once in a while, right. So how do we backtrack Like? That takes some decision making. What are we going to wear? What are we going to have for breakfast? Then we check our phone. Right, some of us out there we're checking our phone before we even get out of bed. That's our first decision mistake right there.

Speaker 1:

Suddenly, we are hit with this flood of micro decisions. And these micro decisions we've talked about this they are other people's problems, not ours. Which email are we going to read first? Are we going to respond now? Are we going to respond later? Do I want to check out social media right now? If I do, am I going to sit here and engage on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn before my feet even hit the floor? So now you get up, you do you know shower, get ready for bed, get ready for your day, start you know driving to the office or going to the restaurant or sitting at your desk, whatever. That is more decisions to be made. Which projects are we going to tackle first? Am I going to take this impromptu call from a client? How am I going to handle this question from a team member? How many of you walk through the door if you walk through the door to a team and you immediately are hit with a bunch of other decisions that have nothing to do with what you had planned that day.

Speaker 1:

So by lunchtime your decision-making muscle is really tired, but you don't really notice because you're still running on that momentum. You have that morning momentum, your caffeine, whatever that looks like, and then the slump hits. Like I said, for me two, three o'clock, for my clients it's six o'clock at night. Your brain says I'm done, I'm throwing in the towel, and sometimes it's really not that you're physically tired, you're not looking to go to bed, you're not looking to take a nap, it's just that your decision-making capacity is really, really tapped out. So all of a sudden, the project that you're starting at three o'clock in the afternoon that should take 45 minutes an hour, now it's taking two hours, three hours. You're scrolling on your phone instead of making progress on your goals. This is why even simple, simple tasks feel really overwhelming in the afternoon, because our brains are desperately trying to avoid making any more decisions. So what does it do? It defaults to the path of least resistance, which for us in this digital age, usually means mindless scrolling or busy work that feels productive and that does not actually move our business forward.

Speaker 1:

So I learned this lesson, like I said, through these conversations with my client, and then I didn't realize how much it applied to me until I was in the middle of doing something new in my business, trying to launch my new program, and every afternoon I would hit this wall where I just could not think strategically anymore, find myself like jumping from going through the landing page and creating the course outline, and I would find myself jumping from there to oh you know what? I think I want to reorganize all the folders in my Google Drive, or now seems like a really good time to find some new images for my website, or maybe I should check out a new photographer to see if I should schedule a photo shoot for myself. Anything that felt like work but didn't actually require decision making. So I got really frustrated and I kept thinking to myself like what the heck is going on. You, jen, you are a business strategist, you are supposed to be able to power through this. And then I thought about my client in the restaurant and I was like, oh, wait a minute, she was supposed to be able to power through this also. So I realized it really was decision fatigue that was affecting her and decision fatigue that was affecting me, and everything really clicked.

Speaker 1:

I wasn't lazy, I wasn't unfocused, I wasn't approaching my day backwards. I was just using all of my best decision-making energy on choices that I would call low stakes. Decision-making energy on choices that I would call low stakes, like who cares what I'm eating for breakfast and you know, like all of these things in the morning, they aren't low stakes choices, and I'm leaving all of my most important work for when my brain was already exhausted. And it's kind of like. I don't know if anybody else out there does this, but sometimes if there's something I want to do, like read a book for pleasure or watch a guilty pleasure reality TV show, I will have this thing in my brain where I need to check off all of these boxes before I give myself permission to actually go enjoy the thing. I do the same thing. I didn't realize it, but I actually do the same thing in my work.

Speaker 1:

If there's something really important, I get excited by my work, right? So if I'm going to be filming new course material or something like that, I look forward to it. I get excited by it and I put it on my calendar and I will look at it and I'm like, okay, calendar, and I will look at it and I'm like, okay, before I do that, I need to check off boxes one through 10. And that is what was actually working against me is that box one through 10 was taking up all of my decision-making and then, when it came to the thing I really wanted to do, I didn't have the energy in my decision-making to do it. Kind of like if you think about the watching a TV show or reading a book checking off all the things youmaking to do it. Kind of like if you think about the watching a TV show or reading a book checking off all the things you want to do around your house before you give yourself permission, then you sit down to watch the show and what happens? You fall asleep because you just can't fit any more things into your day. So what I did was completely restructured my day, which, hello, create your day podcast. That's why we're here.

Speaker 1:

So I want to share this with you because this was a game changer. So first, I really did try to automate or pre-decide everything I could. So this is things like the alarm. I wasn't thinking every night, what am I going to do tomorrow? Just have an alarm that's set for every day. Do you have days where maybe you're going to the gym so you have to get up an hour earlier? On those days, just have the alarm set and get up and use that time for yourself, right? So my morning routine became totally automatic. Maybe at one point I was making what is it overnight oats for breakfast in the morning, so took that off my plate. So same breakfast every day, same workout time, same outfit formula, right? Like what am I wearing? Yes, I basically wear the same shit every day, I feel like. So second, I started time blocking the high stakes decisions. So if you have ever watched my time management course, we talk a little bit about this Looking at your week and figuring out where are the really important things, where should they live on my calendar before I put in any of that other stuff. So my high stake decisions would go on my peak decision making hours.

Speaker 1:

I'm a morning person. I'm sure some of you out there are like Jen. I make my best decisions at 11 o'clock with three cups of coffee to go, and I'm up till 2 am. Great, that's not me. I'm a morning person. So for me I wanna focus on those things between like 8 am and 11 am. That's when I wanna make all my strategic business decisions, plan all of my content. Anything that really requires my mental energy happens best during those hours. Then I'll create what I call a decision buffer and these are responses to common situations so that I don't have to decide it in the moment. So I have a standard response for networking invitations. I get a lot of them. I get a lot of emails asking me to go to different events. I have a standard response and it just buys me time and then I can think about it, but it's not going to pull me away in the moment. I have a process for handling new client requests and I'm starting not there yet, but I'm starting to develop this filter, I guess you would say, which is like predetermined criteria for saying yes or no to an opportunity, so that I'm not just a yes person all the time. So the results of all this the purpose is that my slump while it doesn't necessarily disappear completely, because I'm not stopping working at 11 o'clock in the morning, but it becomes more manageable and I'm not relying on that time period for making decisions that are super duper important anymore.

Speaker 1:

So there is a deeper lesson here, right, which to me, is where it gets interesting, because this slump is not just about decision fatigue. That decision fatigue is a symptom. And what is it a symptom of? It's a symptom of not having clarity around your priorities. So when you know exactly what you're supposed to be working on and why it has the priority that it has, you don't waste mental energy debating with yourself over what you're supposed to do next. When you have clear criteria for making decisions, which is that filter I'm creating for myself, I'm not going to exhaust myself anymore weighing out every option. It's easy. It's a yes or a no. It either checks the boxes or it doesn't. And this is where a lot of business owners get it wrong. They think that the solution to that decision fatigue or the afternoon fatigue is better time management or more energy right, more coffee. But actually it's better decision management, not time management.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about what happened with my client that I was telling you about at the restaurant. When she started implementing this, she spent her Sunday evening doing the Monday hour one. That's what my time management course is based on Monday hour one. And she did it on her Sunday, and I tell everybody when they decide to take it on for the first time. Do it when it's best for you. Maybe Saturday mornings are your best time to book out your next week. But this is when I want you to do what you would call, maybe, your decision map. I want you to pre-decide when you're going to check your email. How are you going to prioritize client work? What is your standard response going to be to all of the things you can anticipate happening? And this is what my client did. She sat down, looked at her calendar and she was like you know what this week? I know that some of my distributors are going to be asking me about my next menu items, so I'm going to just go ahead, create a standard response that's going to buy me some time for that and get it set to go.

Speaker 1:

And the first week that she did this, she definitely felt a little bit better Not 100% better. It wasn't like revolutionary, but it was noticeable. But after about three weeks she started telling me I really feel more focused. I get to that point in the day and I'm not worried about what's going to happen next, because I took care of it on Sunday. So the real breakthrough actually came when she realized wait a minute. I'm not just more focused in that part of the day, I'm actually more focused all day because I'm not second guessing myself. That worry kept causing me to second guess what should I be doing right now and am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Well, if you plan it all out on Saturday morning or Sunday night or Monday morning, you don't have to second guess yourself. That's where the real magic comes in. You can reduce your decision fatigue and it doesn't just fix that slump. You're actually improving your entire day because you're not constantly burning mental energy on things that don't matter.

Speaker 1:

So, as always, I want to really talk about how we can implement this. Let's get practical and not just talk about it. So we can start by kind of looking at your decisions, notice how many decisions you're making. Don't try to change anything yet, but just become aware. I promise you're going to be shocked by the number. I want you to just Maybe write down notes app in your phone notebook, whatever you're using to do this kind of work and write down the decisions that you're making. Really write down the decisions that you're making, become aware of them and then identify what are the decisions that are draining you. These are probably recurring things that don't really matter, but they're eating up your mental energy. Things like okay, if you don't like creating content which as business owners now we have to create so much freaking content right, if you don't like doing that, that's probably draining to you, so that would be a decision drainer. So things like creating content, things like how to respond to emails or fitting breaks into your day, then I want you to create some systems. These systems are going to eliminate or pre-decide those drains. So think about what decisions can you batch together? Can you create templates for common things? Can you establish routines, non-negotiable routines, because, guess what? We can all establish routines. It doesn't matter how many routines we have if we're not actually following them. So the routines have to be non-negotiable and that is how we're going to decide what does not deserve our creative energy.

Speaker 1:

Then I want you to protect your peak decision-making hours, identify what works well for you. For a lot of people, it is the first two to three hours of their workday. You want to guard that time fiercely. We don't want to let any of those drainers come into those hours of your day. So the system that you find has to work with that result in mind. I always say we start with the end in mind. What's the result that we want? The result that we want is we get a good two, three, four hour block of our workday where we could do the work that matters most and not be drained by decision fatigue. So what system will work for you that's going to clear that time? Again, the system that I use and that I teach is to find time on the weekend or first thing Monday morning to plot things on your calendar so that you can keep this time clear.

Speaker 1:

What I want you to remember is that having this fatigue, having this slump in your day, doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It's not a sign that you need more willpower. It's really feedback from your body, feedback from your brain, that you're not being strategic about how you're using your energy. And there are people that you see, I'm sure that you think they seem to have endless focus. They seem to have endless energy. And there are people that you see, I'm sure that you think they seem to have endless focus, they seem to have endless energy. They're like superhuman. Right, they're not really superhuman and they really don't have endless focus. They definitely do not have endless energy, but they are better at managing their decisions.

Speaker 1:

This afternoon, crash, do you hear my dog playing with her toy in the background? I apologize. This afternoon, crash, it is trying to tell you something, but the question is are you listening to what your brain and your body is telling you? Listening and answering that call are what's going to make the difference. I know you're busy. I know that you have all of these plates in the air right, all of these balls that you're juggling, and it can be hard to prioritize, but having clarity around your priorities is really going to be the game changer when it comes to managing your energy in your business. So hope this was helpful. I would love for you to take this information. Go out there, create your day in the best way possible. Create the business that you want to have, not the business that controls your life. Until next week, go out there, take care of each other, take care of yourselves, and I will see you next time on the Create your Day podcast. Have a great week everybody.