What Have You Dropped?

I asked a client a simple question last week: "What have you dropped?"

He's a senior leader. Smart, self-aware, someone who has done real work on himself. He's been navigating months of high demand, organisational complexity, and the kind of relentless decision-making that leaves little room to breathe. And he paused in a way that told me he already knew the answer.

He'd stopped exercising entirely. Saturday sport, the one thing he genuinely looked forward to each week, had been cancelled three weeks running and never reinstated. Dinner had become whatever was fastest.

And what had he picked up instead? The news, first thing in the morning. A second coffee that became a third. Late-night scrolling that passed as winding down.

Here is what I want leaders to sit with: this is not a discipline problem. It's a biology problem.

The Science Behind the Pattern

When the brain registers sustained threat, whether that's a volatile market, a restructure, a high-stakes negotiation that never quite closes, or simply the accumulation of pressure over months, it begins to redirect its resources. The parts of your brain responsible for clear thinking, sound judgment, empathy, creativity, and the ability to read a room start to lose ground to the parts wired for survival. This is not a character flaw. It is your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

But here is the part that matters for you as a leader: the behaviours you quietly drop are often the very inputs your brain needs to stay in its highest-functioning state. And the things you pick up tend to reinforce the exact state you're trying to move out of.

Take nutrition. The brain consumes roughly 20 percent of the body's total energy. It is the most metabolically demanding organ you have. Rushed dinners and skipped meals are not neutral choices. When food quality deteriorates under pressure, which it almost always does, the cognitive cost is not abstract. It is measurable. Concentration narrows. Decision fatigue arrives earlier. The capacity to hold complexity, to see more than one move ahead, diminishes quietly and without announcement.

Or movement. When exercise disappears from a leader's week it rarely announces itself as a loss. It just quietly stops happening. But physical activity and the brain's ability to regulate stress are deeply connected. Movement helps clear the biochemical byproducts of a sustained stress response and supports the production of the neurotransmitters that underpin focus, mood, and emotional steadiness. Sport carries something beyond the physical too. It involves play, spontaneity, and a quality of engagement that asks nothing strategic of you. When leaders drop sport under pressure they often frame it as a sensible trade-off. The research suggests otherwise.

And then there is the news. The research is not kind to habitual consumption of distressing media. Not because staying informed is wrong, but because a constant feed of threat-based information keeps your nervous system in a state of low-grade alertness. You are essentially asking your brain to stay calm and strategic while simultaneously feeding it a signal that the world is dangerous. Something has to give, and it is usually the clarity you need most.

Three Questions Worth Sitting With

If you're honest with yourself:

1. Looking back at the last 60 to 90 days under pressure, what was the first thing you stopped doing? The thing you told yourself you'd come back to once things settled.

2. Of the habits or behaviours you've reached for most during that same period, how many of them actually helped you recover versus simply helped you get through?

3. Where has the shift shown up most clearly in your leadership - in the quality of your decisions, in how you show up in the room, or in your capacity to think past the immediate pressure?

There are no right answers. But there are honest ones. I'm developing a full self-assessment built around this pattern for leaders navigating sustained pressure. If those questions landed, watch this space.

The Real Audit

This is the tension I want to name for C-suite leaders specifically. You are often at your most exposed, your most visible, and your most consequential at exactly the moment your biology is working hardest against you. The drop-and-pick-up pattern happens without your permission. It is rarely dramatic. It is a slow erosion, not a collapse.

And here is the challenge worth sitting with: most leaders I work with can describe their strategic priorities in precise detail. Very few can tell me, with the same precision, what they are doing each day to protect the quality of their thinking. Not the outcomes of their thinking. The quality of it. The underlying conditions.

Because what keeps you sharp under pressure is not what you reach for. It is what you refuse to let go.

In the last period of significant pressure you've been through, what did you put down? And what did you pick up in its place?

If there's a gap between the two lists, that gap is worth more of your attention than almost anything else on your agenda.

Marnie Dillon works with senior leaders and organisations through a neuroscience-informed coaching approach, supporting performance, decision-making, and sustainable leadership under pressure.