Has Trying Harder Stopped Working? Five Ways to Reclaim Your Edge at Work
Written by Sass Allard, Strategic Coach & Change Consultant
Sass Allard is a strategic coach and change consultant helping leaders and high-performing women navigate complex change with clarity, resilience, and practical insight drawn from over 20 years in global organisations.
As a woman somewhere in your forties or fifties, you might feel that the faculties you have always relied on have started to feel unreliable. The instinct that kicks in is to assume you’ve become the problem, and you work harder to cover it.
Perimenopause is very often the quiet author behind all of this. Women end up carrying a physiological shift as if it were a personal failing, redoubling effort at the moment their nervous system is asking for something different, and the harder working response tends to make it worse.
Fluctuating oestrogen affects the parts of the brain responsible for emotional memory, stress regulation, and decision making, which goes some way to explaining why so many competent women describe a loss of confidence in their own judgement at the stage when they have the most experience to draw on.
The five things worth doing differently at work
Pay attention to what you are compensating for. Most women in this transition are months or years into quietly covering for something before they acknowledge it, and the compensation itself tends to be more exhausting than the underlying difficulty. Naming it is where your energy starts to return.
Stop performing fine. The professional habit of presenting composure regardless of internal state is useful up to the point where it prevents you from getting what you actually need. Selective honesty, with a coach or trusted colleague, is the faster route back to functioning at a level that works for you now.
Reconsider what effort looks like today. Focused effort, recovery, and ruthless prioritisation tend to produce better results at this stage than volume. Women who make this adjustment tend to find their performance improves.
Take the physical seriously. Sleep, movement, and creative activity are neurological inputs. Sleep consolidates memory and emotional regulation, both of which perimenopause disrupts. Movement and creative practice have a documented effect on cortisol and dopamine, two of the systems most affected by hormonal change, and for many women at this stage, they are the precondition for performing well.
Act on what you already know. Most women navigating this transition have a clear, quiet sense of what needs to change. Trusting your instinct and following that clarity tends to open up more than it closes down.
Five questions worth sitting with
Give each of these a few minutes and try not to overthink it.
What have I been quietly compensating for, and how long has it been going on?
What am I afraid that says about me?
Where am I spending energy performing that I’m fine?
What would I stop doing if I trusted this wasn’t a failing?
What do I already know I need, and haven’t said out loud?
Trying harder is always going to reach its limit. What sits on the other side of that, once the performing stops and the honest assessment begins, is more workable than most women expect.
Final thoughts
There is a quiet grief that can come with realising the old way of working no longer works. For many women, especially those who have built careers on competence, reliability, and emotional intelligence, the first instinct is to push through. To stay sharp. To keep up. To prove nothing has changed. But something has changed, and acknowledging that is not weakness. It is information.
Perimenopause does not erase your capability. It asks you to relate to your capacity differently. The skills, insight, judgement, and experience you have built over decades are still there, but they may need a different rhythm, different boundaries, and a more honest relationship with recovery. The goal is not to become who you were ten years ago. The goal is to lead, work, decide, and create from who you are now.
Trying harder can feel like control, but often it is a sign that something deeper needs attention. When effort becomes constant compensation, it stops being productive and starts becoming costly. The edge you are looking for may not come from doing more. It may come from telling the truth sooner, protecting your energy more carefully, and trusting that your body is not betraying you. It is trying to get your attention.
This stage can become a powerful recalibration. It can clarify what matters, what no longer fits, and what kind of work life you are no longer willing to tolerate. For many women, the shift is not the end of ambition. It is the beginning of a more sustainable, self-respecting version of it.
Trying harder is always going to reach its limit. What sits on the other side of that, once the performing stops and the honest assessment begins, is more workable than most women expect.
Read more from Sass Allard
Sass Allard, Strategic Coach & Change Consultant
Sass Allard works at the intersection of leadership, behaviour, and wellbeing, supporting individuals and organisations as they navigate demanding periods of change. Her background spans two decades in global companies, where she has helped senior leaders strengthen culture, clarity, and capability. She brings a grounded understanding of how hormonal shifts shape women’s experience at work without limiting the broader conversation. As a UN Women delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women, she brings a global lens to agency and progress. Sass writes about adaptation, resilience, and the practical shifts that create real movement in work and life.
