Hey, this week's edition is for the women. Let's get into it.

This International Women's Day/ week I want to talk about something that rarely makes it into the celebration posts.

The bath and bedtime you missed last week because you suddenly remembered something you hadn't done.

The argument that started because your partner asked what you wanted for dinner and you just couldn't make one more decision.

The moment you snapped at someone you love and then sat with the guilt of it long after they'd forgotten.

This isn't a work problem. This is a capacity problem. And it's happening to women in leadership at a rate that should make all of us stop and pay attention.

43% of women in leadership report burnout. For men in the same roles that number is 31%.

That gap isn't about resilience. It's about what happens when you run out of fuel and nobody warned you it was finite.

The Education Bit

Your brain has a limited capacity for decision making, emotional regulation and complex thinking every single day. It doesn't matter how senior you are or how experienced. It runs out.

Psychologists call it decision fatigue. The more decisions you make, the harder each subsequent one becomes. The more you regulate your emotions under pressure, the less capacity you have to do it later.

Here's the problem for women specifically.

By the time a senior woman gets home, she has often already spent her capacity at work. Not just on the high stakes decisions, although those are there too but on the invisible layer underneath them. Managing the dynamics in the room. Reading the mood before a difficult meeting. Holding her own reactions in check in situations where a male colleague probably didn't have to.

Research shows women are significantly more likely than men to be expected to manage emotional situations at work, handle difficult clients and hide their own feelings in the process. That is cognitive work and it costs the same fuel as the strategic work but it barely gets acknowledged.

So by 6pm the tank is empty.

And the people who get the empty version aren't the ones in the boardroom. They're the ones at home.

Your kids asking for one more story. Your partner wanting to talk about something that matters to them. The version of you that used to have something left for the people you love most.

That's the real cost of this. And that's what most burnout content doesn't say.

So How Do You Actually Change It?

Stop spending your best capacity on other people's problems first.

Most women I work with hit their desk running. Emails. Other people's urgencies. Requests. Putting out fires. By 10am their sharpest thinking is already gone.

Your best capacity, the clearest, most regulated version of you needs to go on your most important work first. Not whoever lands in your inbox at 7am.

This week: Before you open your email tomorrow morning, spend the first 20 minutes focusing on doing one thing for you I call this focus time it could be anything but we use this time to "fill up our cup" for the rest of the day. When we start the day in a more calmer and regulated state our interactions are better and we are more focused. We handle difficult situations with ease as we are not in a state of panic or stress.

Build a buffer before you walk through the front door.

The transition from work to home is one of the most important moments of your day and most people treat it like it doesn't exist. You close the laptop, get in the car or walk to the tube and arrive home still mentally in the last meeting.

Your family gets the leftover version and you wonder why you feel disconnected.

A buffer doesn't have to be long. It just has to be deliberate.

This week: Build ten minutes between work and home. A walk around the block. Sitting in the car before you go in. A specific playlist that signals the switch. Something that tells your nervous system that part of the day is done and you are now switching roles. 

Outsource something at home and drop the guilt about it.

There is a version of this conversation that gets dismissed as a privilege conversation. It isn't it's a capacity conversation.

If you are making high stakes decisions all day, managing people, holding pressure and then coming home to plan the meals, book the appointments, organise the childcare and keep the household running because of this you are not getting a break. You are just switching which type of work you're doing.

Getting a cleaner. Using a meal delivery service on a Thursday night. Paying someone to do the school run twice a week. These are not indulgences. They are capacity decisions. But unfortunately women have been conditioned to feel guilty about every single one of them.

We've all heard the phrase you cannot pour from an empty cup but how many of us actually do anything to fill the cup. And because of this the people at home your kids, your partner, yourself get whats left over. Outsourcing isnt a sign of not being able to cope its a sign of good self care and management.

This week: Identify one thing at home that is costing you capacity that someone else could do. Do it today. This week. Book it, order it, ask for it. Notice what it frees up.

This Week's Practical Tool

At the end of each day this week, write down three things.

What did I spend my best capacity on today and was it worth it?

What did I carry today that I brought home with me?

What do the people at home actually need from me tomorrow and what would make that possible?

Write them down. Don't just think them. Remember writing activates the prefrontal cortex, the same part of your brain that gets depleted under chronic stress. 

Listen This Week

Listen on Spotify here!

Why Your Brain Feels Overloaded and How to Fix It: The High Performance Podcast with Dr Tara Swart. 

Dr Tara is a neuroscientist and former psychiatrist. This episode is one of the clearest explanations I've come across of why so many high-functioning people feel exhausted even when they're doing everything right, the hidden cost of being constantly switched on, how chronic stress rewires the brain and what actually helps. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

Work With Me

If this edition resonated, I'd love to go deeper with you live.

I'm hosting a Live Q&A Session bring your real questions, the ones about the pressure, the exhaustion, the version of yourself you're trying to get back and we'll work through them together in real time.

Last Wednesday of every month at 13:00 GMT. Next session: Wednesday 26th March 2026. Sign Up Here!

And if you're ready to do the deeper work, I have a limited number of spots for the Elevate Intensive a focused 90-minute session to identify exactly where you're stuck and give you a clear path forward. As a newsletter subscriber you can claim £100 off with code RESILIENT100 at checkout. Book Now!

See you next Monday, have a great week.

Nicola.

P.S. If you know a woman in leadership who needs to read this today, please pass it on.