Why Leaders Under Pressure Make Worse Decisions

As leaders, we’re expected to make good decisions, even when we’re tired, stressed or running on empty. But what if that expectation is fundamentally flawed?

In this reflective end-of-year episode, we explore a provocative truth: tired, stressed and sick people don’t make good decisions. Drawing on leadership psychology, decision-making research and lived experience, we unpack why energy, not time, is the real constraint on leadership effectiveness.

As we head into Christmas, when fatigue often catches up with us, we look at why leaders are especially vulnerable to decision fatigue, how depleted energy quietly shapes judgement, and what it costs organisations when leaders “power through”.

This isn’t about resilience or weakness. It’s about biology, behaviour and leadership responsibility, and how protecting energy is one of the most strategic decisions leaders can make going into the year ahead.

Key Talking Points

1. Energy, not effort, determines decision quality
2. When energy drops, leaders don’t just decide worse, they decide differently
3. Why leaders are uniquely vulnerable to decision fatigue
4. Energy management matters more than time management
5. Protecting decision quality requires deliberate leadership shifts

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom, stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

So welcome once more to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others.

My name's Dave Morris, and this is a leadership Unscripted episode where I'm joined by Rich to talk about something really close to our hearts at this time of year. It's a Christmas reflection, really, on energy, health, and how that impacts leadership.

So, Rich, welcome to the podcast for the final time this year.

Yeah, thanks, Dave. Yeah, final time. Crumbs. This year has gone quick, hasn't it?

It has gone quick, and I think this is quite a timely episode to think about.

A provocative idea, I guess, is that people who are exhausted, people who are a bit burnt out, or just actually playing poorly at this time here, but do they make good decisions? We can be burnt out any time of year. We can be poorly any time of year.

But obviously sometimes it happens at the Christmas when we just let everything go and suddenly we realize, yeah, we've been in depression, we've been not very well. So I'd like to explore this idea. Now. I'm not sure most organizations operate as if they do make good decisions. They probably do.

But are they making those right decisions? And at Christmas time, it's a good time to reflect on all of this.

You know, it's a time when often fatigue and stress will catch up on us and we can look at our energy and think, okay, well, how can we use that more wisely in the year ahead? And this isn't about being weak or having a lack of resilience. It's about biology, it's about behavior.

And because this is a leadership podcast, it's about focusing that leadership energy. So what's your take on this, Rich?

Yeah, I think this idea of managing our energy healthily is really important.

It is.

Yeah. It is the currency of leadership.

And if we make poor decisions, it can have an impact on our budget, on our bottom line, it can have an impact on people's lives. So making good decisions is core to good business? I think. So.

Being in a place where you can make good decisions with a clear head, your intuition is in a good place, your emotional resilience is managed in a healthy way. All of those things contribute to good decision making, I think.

Yeah. And fundamentally, we need energy for that, don't we?

I mean, I guess I've noticed in the last three weeks I've been a bit poorly, and my energy Levels have been right down, which is not what I'm used to. And I think we all know when our energy levels aren't quite, quite where they usually are.

And it does have an impact on us and it does, as you said, it affects how we think, it affects how we behave. Now, if we've got to make some really important decisions whilst we're feeling like that, as you said, are we gonna make the right decisions?

It's the currency of what we do. But are we gonna make the right ones?

So I guess to sort of start this podcast off, have you got any sort of real life stories that you can sort of share with us about what happens when we make decisions whilst we're feeling a bit depleted?

Yes. So people that listen to this podcast will know that, you know, we're both coaches.

I do a lot of executive and leadership coaching and it's interesting, I've noticed it's very common when people come to me for coaching for people to be on a low ebb, you know, so there's. Maybe they're struggling with resilience, maybe they're struggling with their well being, that the sense of overwhelm, they bring that to coaching.

And sometimes it's one of the reasons why they engage me as a coach. And I can think of a number of examples.

I'm going to be very careful in terms of giving details away because obviously my coaching conversations are confidential.

But I can think relatively recently, a couple of people, it's senior level, director level in an organization where they've come to me, you know, they felt really overwhelmed, on the edge of burnout. And what I noticed, and what was interesting is it radically affected their ability to make good strategic decisions.

I think it almost like mentally closed them in.

So their ability to think beyond, you know, beyond the now, beyond the obvious stresses in their job, beyond the obvious day to day, it really restricted their ability to think strategically. And in some cases, I can think of some where it was having an impact on their relationship, maybe with their team or with peers or colleagues.

So that irritability, maybe they thought they were managing that quite well, but it was impacting relationships.

So it can have an effect on relationships, on strategic thinking, on creativity, on innovation, all of those things which I said is the currency of energy. We want to be innovative, we want to be creative, we want to be strategic when we make decisions as leaders, don't we?

We do. And do you think it's as simple as when we feel depleted?

Whether it's just because we're overloaded or Just because we actually feel poorly, whatever that reason is. Do you think sometimes we rush decisions just because we are feeling that lack of energy, that lack of being our best version of ourself?

Is it just that we rush decisions or does it go wider and bigger than that?

I'm not sure. I would say that usually when we're stressed, often it creeps up on us.

And what happens when we're stressed is usually our fight flight freeze response is almost like permanently switched on.

So if you've got all that adrenaline and cortisone sort of drip feeding into your system, I think that puts us in a position where we're rushing it, doing everything. So we're rushing from one meeting to the next meeting. You know, we're rushing from one email to the next email.

And I think that rushed mindset, you know, the fact that our system is all geared up, I think that can, that that unconsciously impacts our decisions. And we rush decisions, but we probably don't know we're rushing decisions.

And I think when we rush stuff, usually it means we make poor quality decisions. Not always, but usually.

Yeah.

And we have actually talked about this topic, energy management in a previous podcast way back in podcast number 11, so anybody wants to sort of reference back to that. But we talked then about actually the importance of thinking of your energy a bit like a battery, where batteries need to be recharged.

They just don't, they don't go and add infiniteum, do they? I mean, and I think that's what we're talking about here, isn't it?

Actually, if we don't recharge ourselves, if we don't recharge our batteries, this is going to cause this.

Maybe as you said, rushing it because we are a bit depleted and then we may not make the right decisions for ourselves, for other people, for the businesses that we lead in.

So actually thinking about having that balance between getting stuff done and driving forward and all those important things, but also finding time to step back and recharge. I mean, again, this is something that a lot of people struggle with.

And it's only when we get to times like Christmas or maybe that two week holiday in the sun, all of a sudden we realize just how overloaded and depleted we've been.

Yeah.

And I think it's probably useful to think that, you know, if when you take holiday or take time off work, you're a person who usually then gets ill. Yeah, that's a strong suggestion actually, that you've allowed stress and fatigue and all of that overwhelmed stuff to Unconsciously, you know, supercharge your body in an unhealthy way.

You know, so the I talked about, you know, your fight flight freeze system always being switched on the moment you take a holiday, you know, perhaps then you do relax and your immune system has been compromised and then you're vulnerable to all of the bugs and the illnesses that are going around. So, you know, it's a good sense check.

If you're ill when you're on holiday on a regular basis, it's probably a sign or a signal that maybe you haven't got quite this quite imbalance, actually.

Spot on, Rich. I do remember back in previous years when maybe I haven't managed my energy levels as well as I do now. That's exactly what happened to me.

Often is you'd get to those breaks and that would happen to me. And you're right, it is a sign. It's a sign your body's telling you something that you need to listen to.

So, yeah, good point. Yeah.

I mean, the same issue in my 40s, I think that that was a particular time where I was getting into sort of senior management positions and I'd go on holiday and immediately I would get ill, I'd get some sort of cold. And that happened for years and years and years until I, I realized actually that I'm not managing myself very well.

So anybody listen to this who thinks this is resonating with me, Guys, maybe think about a time you made a decision while you were tired or you're exhausted or you're feeling a little bit ill, what happened? And maybe reflect after this podcast on exactly what happened and what outcomes did you get.

And perhaps if you hadn't been quite so depleted, would a different outcome have happened? So, Rich, let's dive into why energy is so important in shaping decision quality. Because as you quite rightly said, it's the currency of leadership.

Yeah. So why does our energy matter so much for decision making in scientific terms and more than anything else?

Yeah. So I don't want to get too preachy about this, but I'm going to state the blindingly obvious. But the research backs up the blind and the obvious.

So, you know, so things like sleep debt, you know, decision fatigue, stress overload, all of those things have an impact on our energy. And if our energy is low, that that shapes our decision making quality. So, you know, just think very simply about sleep debt.

It's very easy to take the Margaret Thatcher approach, I think, didn't she? She famously said she only needed two hours sleep a day or Something or four hours sleep.

It wasn't very many, was it?

No, it wasn't very. And I don't know whether that was true or not. You know, people are. People are different.

But I think there's a real danger in leadership that, you know, we can see, you know, sleep is being for, you know, for the week. And the danger is where busyness is like a badge of honor, always being switched on, not taking much downtime and having as little sleep as possible.

And for me personally, I notice when I don't sleep very well, so I try to do things to get my sleep hygiene and all that sort of stuff in the right place.

But when I sleep well, I notice the impact it has on my ability to focus, the ability to stay, you know, to stay with a task and not get distracted, all of that sort of stuff. So sleep has a massive impact, I think. I mean, it's interesting.

Last night I slept really deeply and I had a weird dream about crashing into somebody with a pink Hillman imp. So for all of the people out there, maybe you could like to interpret that dream for me.

But actually I woke up quite refreshed this morning, but clearly I was in a deep sleep and I had weird dreams, but. So that's a bit of a digression. But I think sleep debt is a really important thing to think about, is leader and what happens is.

Yeah, sorry, Dave, go on.

And I think you make two really important points there, Rich, just to pick up on. One is everybody's different. So, yeah. Whether Margaret Thatcher could operate on four hours sleep a night, maybe she could, maybe she couldn't.

Just because one person can doesn't mean anybody else should try it. I think you have to know your body. I think you have to know what is right for you. And I'm a bit like you.

I kind of have learned to tune into my body over the years in a number of areas. And one is sleep. Because I know if I don't get a good average amount of sleep.

Yes, you're right, it does affect the ability to focus and not get distracted, but it also for me, affects my ability to regulate my emotions. And I think that's an important thing when we come to leadership. You know, are we able to regulate our emotions?

If I'm tired, I get stroppy and I'm sure you probably do, too.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

So I think the other thing to say is, you know, when we're fatigued, when we've had lack of sleep, when we feel stressed and overloaded, what tends to happen is when our fight flight freeze system gets charged, what happens is that that has an impact on our thinking style.

Mm.

So we've talked quite a lot in previous podcasts about left brain and right brain sort of thinking and other stars are thinking as well.

But what happens when we're stressed and the cortisone is sort of flowing around our body and the adrenaline is flowing around our body is we've become very left brained. So in other words, that means we become very analytical, you know, very risk averse, very data driven.

And our right brain, which is the part of the brain that, you know, where we do our creative thinking, we're making connections, we're being innovative, that tends to get shut down when we're under pressure.

So, and we see this in organizations, we've seen this recently with a number of organizations where we've been working where, you know, a pressure comes into an organization and the leadership decision making reverts to very left brained, focused, you know, so it's all very risk averse, it's all very data driven, which might be right on one level, but you shut down all the options for accessing that creative, innovative side, which is bound to impact your decision making.

It does. You talk about left brain, right brain, and we've done quite a few podcasts on whole brain thinking as well.

And you know, if you've actually seen your own whole brain thinking profile, which gives you a map, if you like, of what your thinking preferences are under normal conditions, but it also shows you what they're like when you're under severe pressure. A lot of people's thinking changes quite dramatically under pressure. As you said, it may well focus a lot more on left brain type of thinking.

Sometimes it can get very, very emotional and that emotion can be, can be bottled in or it can come spilling out. But knowing how your thinking changes under pressure is not a bad thing to know because then you can start to think about how you regulate that.

So, Rich, you've made three good points there.

Yet sleep debt, decision fatigue and stress load are the key sort of scientific pointers here as to why energy matters so much in terms of decision quality. And when our energy drops, we don't just decide worse, we decide differently. And that's the point you've just made there.

So again, a reflection prompt for anybody listening to this. How often do you notice your energy levels influencing your judgment? I'm sure it does.

So, Rich, let's go on to leadership particularly and why leaders are especially vulnerable to this happening. Yeah, because Often leaders pride themselves on powering through. No matter what the cost, we'll just power through.

I'm not always sure that's a good idea, and I'm sure you're not either.

No, no.

And I think the challenge here is, you know, if you think about the system and the culture that a lot of leaders work in, there's real pressure to be always available, you know, to be visible to your team, not to let the team down. And, you know, and almost like this, almost like unconscious pressure to feel that it's you that makes all the decisions.

So, you know, so the buck stops with you as a leader. And to some degree, that's true. But I think the culture puts unhelpful pressure on leaders around availability.

And I think leaders put the pressure on themselves to think they're the ones that always have to make the decisions. So I think it's about challenging that mindset, challenging that perceived need.

And it is a perceived need to always be available, not to let the team down. And you're the one that always has to make the decision. So I think it's really important to recognize, are you being irritable?

Are you being withdrawn? Are you getting ill?

All of those things are pointers to the fact that you're not managing those system pressures and your self pressures in a healthy way. So don't ignore the signals.

Make sure actually that some of the stories in your head that you have about some of your organization's expectations, sometimes they're created by ourselves and they're just perceived perceptions.

Yeah. And I think the point you make, because this goes hand in hand, if we just power through regardless, we may initially miss those signals.

That irritability, that withdrawal, that oncoming illness. We might just sort of bat that away, thinking that's not really anything to worry about right now. And actually those signals are there for a reason.

They are actually there and they're very important. So are we missing the signals that you need to listen to when we're depleted?

That's a really important point because I guess if we don't Rich, there's a cost to all this. And, you know, if we're making decisions that aren't the best decisions, effectively, we're exporting risk out to our team and into the organization.

Aren't we not operating at our best level?

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess my parting thoughts around this is just sense.

Check the perceived expectations on yourself, whether they come from you, whether they come from the organization. Actually, are they real expectations or are you just putting unnecessary pressure on Yourself.

Yeah. And is it something that you, that you've just told yourself for years and years and years? Yeah, actually it's not reality.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I think there's a lot wrapped up in this, isn't there? Okay, so.

But I can then go back to your point though, Rich, actually, if you are the sort of person that was getting to these, you know, Christmas time, holiday time and you're regularly ill, that is telling you something that you need to listen to.

Yes, yes, yeah, exactly. Right, yeah.

So let's, let's sort of move this conversation into the difference between energy management and time management. Because I think what we're talking about here is not time management at all. This is energy management. It's a mindset shift. Yeah.

We don't run out of time. There's 24 hours in a day. You don't run out of it. It's there, but it's how you use it.

But what you do run out of is the decision making energy that you need to make quality decisions. And I know we've talked again in episode 11, we've talked about some of the dimensions of energy.

It might just be worth rich recapping on what those are.

Yeah. So this goes back to the point I made earlier about wearing busyness as a badge of honour and feeling that pressure to fit so much in during the day.

So it's all about fitting lots in during the day. You know, going to meetings and, you know, always being on.

And actually what you're not doing is using your energy to focus on really adding value and adding value in the important places and being available to make the quality decisions on important issues when you need to.

So we like to talk about energy management as opposed to time management because I think that's a healthier way and a healthier lens through which to see. Through which to see leadership.

Agreed.

Now we, yeah, so we read an article, it's a couple of years ago now, I think by the Harvard Business Review and they did a very interesting article on the difference between energy management versus time management. And they pulled out four aspects of energy management that leaders should think about.

So they talked about the physical energy management, that's all about our body. They talked about the quality of energy management. So that's about how we manage our emotional sort of focus, if you like.

They talked about the focus of energy, so that's all about effective mind cognitive management. And they talked about what they called spirit, which I thought was quite interesting in the context of the Harvard Business Review.

But by that they meant the degree to which the work you're doing is focused on meaning and purpose.

So I'm just going to just talk very quickly about those four things, and if you want to go into more detail about that, go back to the podcast that Dave referenced. So I think we've already talked about. About the body, physical stuff.

Yeah.

So we talked about sleep debt and all that sort of stuff. And there's things like nutrition and exercising and, you know, building in recovery time into our day.

They're really important aspects to think about. So I'm not going to get too preachy about that.

When we talk about the quality of our energy, in other words, if you like, our ability to regulate our emotions in a healthy way. So this is about actually making sure we build an appropriate recovery time and we manage our emotional response to our situations in a healthy way.

So it's moving from a very reactive mindset. So in other words, we're simply just reacting to circumstances around us.

We're going from one meeting to the next, we're going from one decision to the next, and we're just simply shooting from the hip to a more what we call proactive mindset, where actually, you know, you feel in charge of, you know, the. You know, your situations.

You know, you're a product of your decisions and attitude rather than just being a product of the circumstances that you're in. So, you know, you're being very proactive in terms of how you're managing your response to what's going on around you.

So you're managing your emotional regulation in a very healthy way, in a very proactive way.

But that's. Yeah, sorry. I mean, that goes back to what you said about flight, fight, or freeze.

It does.

If we perceive we're being attacked, even if we're not actually being attacked and we've got very depleted energy, we're more likely to just intuitively, instinctively respond, and not always in a good way, because we might, you know, we might bark at somebody, we might bite their head off, you know, to coin a phrase. So actually, this fight, flight and freeze thing is really important to understand.

If we manage our energy better, we can be more assertive around how we respond to that. And I think that is one thing that people have to really think about with energy management.

Am I giving myself the chance to assertively respond in the right way?

Yeah. And the third thing is around actually the focus of your energy. So this is how well you manage your mind effectively. So.

So this is about actually our ability to stay focused and not Be distracted. I'm sure the people listening will all know those situations where we feel anxious, on edge. There are stresses that happen in our life.

And then when we sit down to write that important report, before we know it, we're distracted and browsing the BBC website or whatever for the latest news, and we're flitting our attention, attention all over the place. Or maybe we're, you know, multitasking. I'll come to multitasking in a minute because I think that's a myth. You know, we're going from one.

One meeting to the next. We're going from one email to the next email, and then suddenly you remember, actually, oh, I was working on that report.

And then you go back to the report and you know, that jittery sort of mindset means we lack focus and we lack the ability to stay with one task at a time. So. So I, I think actually it's a myth that we can multitask. Yeah. And actually so.

And when I talk about multitasking, I'm talking about consciously multitasking. So I'm not talking about the ability, you know, to do things like, you know, when we drive, to change gear and to steer at the same time.

You know, that's, you know, that's unconscious multitasking where we've, you know, we've essentially programmed our brain to do those two things, but that's unconscious. But we can't consciously multitask.

So, you know, if you're writing a report and you're talking to somebody else at the same time, you're not multitasking. You're actually switch tasking. And when we switch, when we switch task, it takes a while for our brain to go from one task to the next.

So switch tasking is really unproductive. It interrupts our focus and it interrupts the quality of our work.

So actually, the ability to manage ourselves healthily and to stay focused and to focus certain parts of the day, you know, where we, where we do our best work, we need to make important decisions.

It's being aware of our energy levels when we're at our best and then focusing the best parts of our day to making those important decisions, doing those important tasks and doing those important pieces of work and staying in focus. Yeah, that's really important.

And it's okay if that.

Then at some point later in the day, if you want to have an hour where you do switch tasks all over the place because you can try and read it, read some stuff, and you can try and, you know, scroll through social Media or whatever you want to do, I mean, that's fine. I mean, there's a time and a place for all of that.

But as you said, if you want to actually use your energy productively and make quality decisions, you do need to focus, you do need to avoid distraction. You do not need overloading your cognitive load. That's not going to help you at all, is it?

Yeah, yeah. And I think it's important for us as human beings to train our brains to be able to stay focused.

I think contemporary life, things like social media and, you know, access to all the information and, you know, the inputs we get, I think militates against focused effort. And I think we need to retrain our brains to be able to stay focused and to stay in the zone and to stay in the flow.

Yeah.

And the last thing just to say, you know, going back to the Harvard Business Review, sort of four things. So we talked about the physical, the body. We've talked about the mental, the focus. We talked about the emotional, the quality of our energy.

The final one they talk about, which I think is really interesting, is what they call the spiritual energy management. So this is the degree to which the work we're doing is aligned with our values and our purpose.

And, you know, this will be different for different people. So it doesn't have to be this high flute in sort of, you know, sort of meta purpose that we have in life. It might be for some people.

Yeah.

And. But.

But actually it's just to take a step back every now and again, thinking, you know, is the work I'm doing, is the career trajectory that I've chosen, is it aligned with my strengths and my passions and my values? And are there different decisions I can make so I can do work that's more closely aligned to my set of values and purpose?

Because when the going gets tough, if we're doing work that we believe in and that aligns with our values and purpose, we're much more likely to stay resilient and to stay the course if those things are aligned.

Well, I think I may have mentioned this to you before in a previous podcast about decision making, specifically linked to this spiritual use of the energy, if you like. I remember my daughter asked me earlier this year, you know, how do I decide who to be friends with, given that she's now just turned 13?

And it's a difficult time of your life, you know, for friendships.

And it's obviously these days, it's much more tougher, I think, than when I grew up, when I was 13, because I didn't have social media to contend with, but I sat down with her thinking, okay, well how can I help her make some of those decisions a bit more effectively? And we did a little values elicitation exercise which we didn't call values, we called it building blocks.

But it was essentially the same thing to get her to tap into what really matters to her and therefore better when she needs to and wants to make those better decisions.

Think about what matters to her, how I hear her core values and at 12, when she did this exercise earlier in the year, she found that really, really helpful.

Now if a 12 year old can do it and find it helpful, surely for an adult who is a leader in a business or leading a team, it surely it's going to be valuable.

Yeah, absolutely.

So four key areas there, four dimensions of energy, Rich. There's the body, there is the emotional, there is the, the focus and the cognitive load and there's the spiritual.

I think those are really interesting dimensions. And if we protect our energy better, we will make better decisions. I think that's, that's, that's the core insight from this.

Yeah.

For anybody listening to this, those four dimensions that Richard just described, which ones do you neglect the most? Which ones do you need to do a little bit of extra work on now as we sort of shift into a new year in January? Yeah.

What can we do differently to start the new year, Rich? Have you got any sort of pointers for people that maybe think, yeah, there's some really important points that the guys are talking about here.

I think I need to do a bit of work on my energy management. What would you point them towards?

A couple of things.

So when you have important work to do or important decisions to make, schedule time in or choose time to make those decisions to do that work when your energy is high. So that's develop your self awareness around when are you at your best?

Sometimes that can be a particular part of the day or whatever that means to you. But bring some self awareness us to important work. Important decisions align that with when your energy is high.

I also think it's important to separate this idea of presence from productivity. I touched on this a little bit earlier.

You know, so this, this perceived pressure that we feel to always be available, to always be present and visible, you know, so obviously leaders and managers need to be present and they need to be with their team and to show their presence. But there's a difference between choosing when to be visible and when you add the most value to things like meetings that happen.

So Sometimes I think it would be important to say to your team, actually, I've got something really important to do, this report to write or whatever that might be. So I'm not going to go to that particular meeting because actually this is more important.

So you're prioritizing adding value and productivity to just being present at every single meeting, that there is so separate presence from productivity. I think it's really important, the third thing, to build recovery into your leadership practice.

You know, so, you know, so whether that just means, you know, good sleep hygiene, whether that means, you know, building in rest and recovery time, whether that means building in consolidation time after important meetings, so you take notes and. And do some reflection, whatever that means to you, build in recovery time into your leadership practice.

If you're the sort of person that rushes into decisions, maybe build in this idea of what we call decision buffers. Okay, so if you've got a decision to make, maybe, I don't know, count to 10 or seek a second opinion, ask somebody else's opinion.

So to stop yourself from making impulsive decisions.

Yeah.

And I think the last thing I would say is, you know, we're not at our best all the time, and that's okay.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, you know, give yourself the time and the space to recover, focus your best times a day, the best times when your energy is high, to doing the important work and making those important decisions.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, again, we did a recent podcast on how to use 30 minutes of time really productively.

Yeah, we did, didn't we? Yeah.

It's probably worth people tapping into that because some of what we were talking about in that podcast is very relevant to what you've just said, especially the bit about building recovery into your leadership practice. Because actually, behavior, as you said, resting is not a reward. It's actually good leadership behavior, whatever that looks like.

So, again, anybody listen to what Richard said there? What's your takeaway? But pick one shift, maybe that you could commit to in January if you think.

Yeah, actually, I do need to manage my energy a whole lot better than I do at the moment. So, Rich, I think that's it really for today, isn't it? Unless you've got any bits that you want to make.

Yeah, no, no, no, that's it.

So before I wrap this podcast up, I would just like to say this is the 50th podcast that's gone out this year.

Is it 50? Is it?

Wow, it's number 50.

There will be a couple of more over Christmas, even though Rich and I will be taking a little bit of time off to manage our energy levels, but there'll be a couple of re releases we're going to put out, which we think are really interesting topics that people might want to reflect on over Christmas.

So there will be that and we'll be back in January with some whole new topics, with some whole new guests and some more conversations between Rich and I. But I would like to say to anybody who has been listening to this, I know we've got some regular listeners that, that love the podcasts.

Thank you very much. Thank you for supporting us. I hope you found these things useful. I hope you found them. Product help you be more productive.

So again, please help us spread the word. We would like to reach a lot more people next year.

But as you pause this Christmas, ask yourself, which decisions did I make this year while I was tired, while I was depleted, and what did that cost me? What did it cost other people? What did it cost my business?

And what would I change if I took energy as seriously as I do trying to get the best performance out of myself next year? You don't need more willpower. What we do need, though, is people making better, more healthily charged decisions.

So, Rich, I hope you have a good rest over Christmas.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And to our listeners, you know, if you celebrate Christmas, have a great Christmas. Or if you just enjoy the holiday. Enjoy the holiday.

So have a. Have a fab time.

See you soon.

See you soon. By.