The Real Reason You Snap, Stall, and Underperform — Even on Good Days

You show up to the thing you actually love after your day of work. Maybe it’s your family, a hobby, or a side project. But it feels like your brain just won’t co-operate, like you and your brain are separate, and you aren’t on the same page.

Some days, it just doesn't go right. You feel absolutely fine, but you’re snapping at your loved ones, you’re making mistakes that you shouldn’t, or just cannot get the same output as normal. 

Most of us have a name for this. Off day. Bad mood. Tired. Not switched on. Head wasn't in it. What we rarely ask is what that phrase is actually describing, or why it shows up on some days and disappears on others. 

I used to believe these were character flaws to work on; my psychology. But the truth is, I was working too hard, and the cause is physiological.

The Manifestations of Low Cognitive Capacity.

I spent a large portion of my life competing internationally in pole vault, a discipline where you get one run-up, one shot to plant the pole, one moment to commit or pull out, and the consequences of getting a single decision wrong are immediate and physical. 

I loved it. But there were more bad days than good days, where things didn’t go to plan. Where my body wouldn’t do what my brain willed it to, where I went home feeling like less of a person because I hadn’t done well - my decisions in the moment hadn’t amounted to a result I was happy with.

These days I train Brazilian jiu-jitsu, where the decisions never stop. Every scramble, move, every transition is another call, over and over.

Two completely different demand profiles. Same failure when my cognitive capacity is low. The decision-making goes before anything else does and you start defaulting old habits, reverting to poor techniques, making sub-par decisions. 

The same can be said for most things in life that you love. Snapping at your family when you feel depleted, making bad calls because you don’t have capacity, and saying ‘I’ll work on it tomorrow’ to your passion project because you’re so depleted. Behavioural patterns that repeat: defaulting, avoidance, and the path of least resistance. 

I used to put these things down to psychology and spend hours working on my personal failings, in the hopes that I’d improve. Now I know that these ‘personal failings’ weren’t the cause of my problems. And the real cause, well, I believe we’re only just starting to understand.

Decision fatigue.

When I met Shawn and the team, it was the first time I’d heard of decision fatigue. Crazy really, considering my degree in Psychology, and Masters in Neuroscience. But I instantly recognised the feeling they described. I did some digging into the research. What I found mostly was decades of self-report data on a concept that had a rocky history of actually replicating. What was missing was anything physiological. Anything that could show why, not just ask you to rate how tired you felt on a scale of one to ten. Maybe because this just wasn’t such a prevalent issue 10-20 years ago. The pace of life whilst also trying to also juggle everything you love, has just exponentially increased. 

The advent of smartphones, being always reachable, always processing more information in the background has definitely impacted the number of micro-decisions we’re making daily, all sucking away at a limited supply of neural resources that we need to do all of the things we do in a day, and do them well. 

What I love about Numin is not only are we offering a solution to this issue, but we’re actively trying to understand the problem, and contributing to the highest level of neuroscientific research on decision fatigue, objective, recorded performance measurements, not purely a self-reporting questionnaire. An issue that has previously been understood as psychological, now being uncovered as having a physiological root. 

In our clinical trial, participants that took Numin had an 11.25% relative increase in win rate, while the placebo groups win rate fell. Think about what goes into a win – the many decisions that need to be made to get there. The extended period of 13 hours in which they had to sustain this decision-making capacity. What would that 11.25% ‘win rate’ increase look like if you were to transfer it to your life? 

Would it mean finally having the capacity to work on a side project you’ve put off all year? Or coming home and being present with your family? 

Could it mean coming away from something you feel passionate about, feeling  like you had a great day and really nailed what you wanted to string together for months, but couldn’t, because you’ve had off day after off day?

I know for me, back when I was competing, I would have been relieved to know it wasn’t a personal failing.That there might finally be another explanation being researched, and that maybe, I could find a solution.