BY MINDA ZETLIN, APR 17, 2025
You’re sitting at your desk, trying to focus on an important task, but your mind keeps wandering instead. You can’t seem to make any progress at all. It’s infuriating, because just yesterday, you were on fire, so productive that you even impressed yourself. What’s wrong with you today?
All that work you got done yesterday? That just might be the problem. That insight comes from Alice Boyes, a PhD and former clinical psychologist, and the author of The Healthy Mind Toolkit (Tarcher, 2018). In a post for Psychology Today, Boyes notes, many of us have good ideas and a good work ethic. “What limits our accomplishments is our ability to recover—how well we can bounce back from hard work and be ready to do it again.”
Fatigue is a problem that busy entrepreneurs and business leaders share with athletes. Boyes notes that training helps athletes succeed, but overtraining can lead to bad results the following day. Sitting at your desk, working on a budget or writing an irresistible proposal may not seem very athletic. But your brain and concentration need recovery time the same way your body would after a vigorous workout. And, she advises, you can use this knowledge to maximize your productivity and effectiveness over your entire work week.
1. Schedule intensity days.
Choose days when you plan to work to your maximum efficiency and get a lot done, Boyes writes. In her own case, she uses Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as intense work days, and as the days when she does more intense physical workouts as well. Tuesdays and Thursdays are lighter days for both work and workouts, “involving consistent tasks done at a puttering pace and effort, similar to an easy run day,” she writes. She takes Sundays off completely, which is very smart. Taking one day off every week with no work at all is essential for your continued productivity.
Boyes writes that this weekly plan has made a huge difference in her own work life. “While I’m not sure this is the optimal routine, it’s proved to be a significant improvement over what I was doing before.”
2. Try an intensity burst.
Sometimes when you’re feeling sluggish, and especially if you’re struggling with procrastination, diving into a brief burst of challenging work can help, Boyes writes. “If you’ve done any recreational running, you’ve probably experienced a ‘struggle bus’ run. You go slower and slower, but it feels harder and harder. Sometimes, a way to counteract this is to briefly run faster.” That burst of activity activates your nervous system and makes running easier, she explains.
If you’re experiencing a struggle bus in your workday, try giving yourself a challenging task and working hard at it for a set period of time, say a 25-minute pomodoro. By the time your timer goes off, you may find that you’re humming along, ready to take a quick break and then dive back in.
3. Find the routine that works best for you.
Perhaps the biggest problem with work fatigue is that we chastise ourselves for our lowered productivity. Instead, Boyes advises, recognize the slowdown as a normal part of being human, for athletes and entrepreneurs alike. Your best strategy is to observe when you’re feeling fatigued and then experiment with different work routines until you find the one that’s optimal for you.
In the world of sports, coaches and athletes see fatigue as a normal part of the process, and they devise strategies to best manage it. They don’t yell at themselves for being too tired to perform at their best. We need to do the same, Boyes writes. When you treat fatigue as a natural part of your process, you can find ways to manage it that work for you. “Fatigue isn’t your enemy—it’s a puzzle waiting to be solved,” Boyes writes.
There’s a growing community of Inc. readers who get a daily text from me with a micro-challenge or thought-provoking question. (Want to learn more? Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many are entrepreneurs or business leaders who know how vital it is to manage their own energy levels for maximum productivity. Planning in advance when you’ll work intensely and when you’ll take it easy is a great place to start.
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Minda Zetlin
Inc. contributing editor Minda Zetlin is the author of Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work. She speaks and writes about productivity, confidence, mindfulness, and how to have a career you love without making yourself miserable.
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