When Pushing Harder Stops Working

You used to handle a lot. You could multitask, keep things running, hold everything together without thinking too much about it.

There was a sense of competence in that, a quiet confidence that no matter how full things got, you could manage.

And then something started to change.

You still do a lot, but lately you’re more tired. More scattered. More easily irritated. Your patience runs out faster than it used to, and your focus doesn’t stretch the way it once did. When things pile up, your instinct is to push harder, but instead of helping, it just makes everything feel worse.

For a long time, I told myself this was just aging. Or that maybe I was becoming less capable in some subtle, hard-to-name way. I didn’t like that explanation, but I didn’t have a better one.

Recently, though, I came across something that completely reframed this for me. And the more I’ve sat with it, the more it explains not only what I’m experiencing, but what I see so many women navigating.

It’s called ultradian rhythms.

If you prefer to watch or listen, the short video version is here. The written reflection continues below.

I hadn’t heard of it before either.

Ultradian rhythms are natural biological cycles shorter than 24 hours. The one that matters most in daily life is your brain’s 90–120 minute work–recovery cycle. In simple terms, your nervous system isn’t designed for continuous output. It works in waves.

Focus naturally rises, you hit a peak, and then there’s a decline, followed by a real physiological need for recovery. That drop isn’t laziness, and it isn’t a discipline issue. It’s how the system is built.

I think most of us are very good at overriding that signal.

I’ve done it myself for years, and honestly, I’ve always been proud of that. It felt like proof that I was capable, resilient, ahead of the curve. And in some ways, that strategy did work. It helped me achieve things. It kept things moving.

But what I’m starting to see now is the cost. When I override that rhythm consistently, I feel it most clearly at the end of the day. I’m more irritable. I have no bandwidth left for the people in my life. I don’t want conversation or connection, I just want to check out.

For a long time, I treated those moments as personal shortcomings. A lack of patience. A mood issue. Something to fix or push past. Now I understand them differently. They’re the natural consequences of asking a nervous system to stay “on” all day.

When that happens, cortisol doesn’t get a chance to come down. Mental fatigue accumulates in the background. The nervous system stays in activation long past when it should have shifted into recovery. Over time, the very strategy that once worked stops working.

This is where midlife really changes the equation.

Ultradian rhythms exist in everyone — men and women alike. But the cost of overriding them isn’t evenly distributed. Many of us are carrying a heavy cognitive and emotional load: not just tasks, but tracking, anticipating, managing relationships, holding things in mind even when we’re supposed to be resting. At the same time, stress recovery becomes more hormonally sensitive. As progesterone fluctuates, the nervous system doesn’t rebound the way it once did. So when we push the same way we always have, we don’t get the same results. We get more fatigue. More reactivity. Sleep that doesn’t fully restore. This is a capacity shift.

Once I saw that, the question I was asking myself changed. Instead of “How do I push through this?” it became “What would it look like to respect how my nervous system actually works?”

What I learned surprised me in its simplicity. Respecting ultradian rhythms means working in focused blocks of about 90 to 120 minutes, followed by real recovery. Ideally, that recovery lasts 15 to 20 minutes, long enough for the nervous system to shift out of high alert.

But real life isn’t ideal, and here’s the part that actually matters: even five or ten minutes helps, as long as it’s real rest.

Real rest isn’t switching tabs. It isn’t checking messages or scrolling. A genuine ultradian break might be stepping outside for a short walk, stretching lightly, closing your eyes, breathing slowly, letting your attention soften, or simply looking out a window at something far away. What matters isn’t the activity itself, but the effect: reduced input, reduced decision-making, reduced sensory load.

If the brain is still processing, it isn’t resting. Scrolling doesn’t count. It keeps the nervous system switched on.

What surprised me most is how much changes when this rhythm is honored. Cortisol starts to cycle instead of accumulate. Focus returns without force. Emotional reactivity softens. Sleep improves. When you return to work, your mind feels clearer instead of depleted. And this led me to a bigger realization:

This isn’t about doing less. It’s about going farther.

I’m starting to see midlife not as a sprint toward the next outcome, but as a long journey I actually want to stay well for. I don’t need to drive myself like a horse to get ahead. I want a nervous system that can sustain me for decades. Once I saw this, I couldn’t unsee it, and it’s already changing how I take care of myself. Learning how to work with your body, not against it, feels like a much more intelligent way forward.