When Winter Changes Your Capacity (and what that might mean for your Business)

Why Winter Changes our Capacity

Winter just hits differently when you run a business.

You don’t just feel it in your mood, you feel it in your inbox, your calendar, your concentration, your motivation, the way tasks suddenly feel heavier than they did in September.

Every Winter, I watch brilliant, capable business owners start doubting themselves because their capacity suddenly drops… and they assume it means something about them.

It doesn’t.

Winter changes your physiology, your environment, and your cognitive load. It adds pressure in places that are already stretched. And most of us forget to factor any of this into the way we run our business.

Why Winter changes our Capacity 

If you, like many people, experience a change in energy level or capacity in Winter it isn’t because you are lazy, unmotivated or not trying hard enough. 

It’s Physiology

Your brain and body are responding to a very real shift in your environment: so what’s actually going on?

1. Less daylight = lower serotonin Serotonin is one of the chemicals that help stabilise mood, motivation and our ability to start tasks. When daylight decreases:

• Serotonin production naturally drops 

• Mood becomes flatter or more sensitive 

• It takes more effort to start tasks 

So when you catch yourself sitting in front of your laptop, knowing exactly what you need to do but being unable to begin?

That’s not just procrastination

That’s a brain requiring more input to generate the same output as it did in the Summer Months.

Serotonin levels influences:

• Mood levels 

• Emotional stability 

• Behavioral control 

• Digestion

• Sleep 

• And other key body functions 

2. More melatonin = increased tiredness and slower processing

Melatonin is the hormone that regulates sleep. So, when the days get shorter and darker our bodies produce more melatonin during the day. 

Which can lead to:

• Heaviness 

• Foggy thinking 

• Lower alertness

• Tasks feeling like they take longer (because they are) 

This isn’t a personal flaw, it’s our bodies natural circadian rhythm responding to a very real change in our environment. 

3. Your Cognitive load increases 

Our Prefrontal Cortex (the part of your brain responsible for planning, decision making and self control) works harder in low-light seasons.

This means:

• Decision fatigue hits even harder than normal 

• Planning will feel like pushing through mud 

• You might be more overwhelmed with tasks that are “simple” 

It’s not that you have lost your capability

Your brain is literally spending more energy and effort trying to do the same tasks. 

Winter doesn’t just impact our energy -  it changes our context

Whether we realise or like to admit it, changes in seasons do bring additional external pressures and most of us forget to factor this in. Here are some examples:

1. Time Compresses 

The days are shorter. There is less daylight to play with and our brain is very aware of that.

Our available working hours naturally feel smaller.

So everything starts to feel very urgent, and a race against the clock. This especially impacts anyone who works outside.

2. Weather changes

Then there is the weather, and no this isn’t something you can just “push through” Being cold is a physiological demand

When it’s cold:

• Your muscles hold more tension

• Aches and pains become harder to ignore 

• Your body tries to conserve heat which impacts energy output 

• Your system is literally working harder to maintain its baseline 

Which means everything from leaving the house to showing up online requires more energy to follow through.

3. Clients Capacity and Context creeps in 

And, your clients feel it too.

As winter sets in their:

• Bandwidth drops

• Routines slip

• Emotional tolerance narrows

• 
  

So you will start to see things like:

• Slower replies 

• More reschedules

• Patchier payments 

• Higher emotional needs

You are holding more than at other times of the year, even though on the surface it might feel like nothing has changed. 

How this might show up in your Business (and in your "motivation" levels)

This is usually the part where self-judgement kicks in and what starts as low level overwhelm, can quickly descend into full blown panic and a sense of impending doom!

Here are some of the ways seasonal capacity shifts might show up in your Business

You might notice things like

• Sitting down to work but not being able to start even though you know what you need to do. 

• Replying to messages later and later, not because you don’t care, but because finding the words feels heavier and harder than normal. 

• Feeling like your brain can’t find a “starting point” 

• Planning and decision making might feel slower, or foggier. 

• You are there physically but not mentally 

• A sense of being behind or dropping balls 

• Needing more alone time than usual, but feeling guilty for wanting it

What helps: Practical adjustments for Seasonal Capacity changes

Winter isn’t something you “mindset” your way out of.

But you can make it easier to run your business when your brain and body are working with less fuel.

Here are some practical shifts you can make especially if you’re juggling classes, 1–1s and family life that respect your capacity instead of fighting it.

1. Check in with your basics

If you feel like your spinning your wheels (more than normal) check in with your basics, before thinking about adding more to an already full plate. If your brain is foggy and everything feels heavier, it’s not always a business problem. It might be that your body just hasn’t had what it needs to function today.

👉 Do this tonight or tomorrow morning: Ask yourself:

• Have I had enough light today? (Even five minutes outside counts.)

• Have I eaten something with actual fuel, not just caffeine or sugar?

• Have I drunk any water since mid-morning?

• Have I been sat on my phone or laptop for too long today?

• Have I had a moment to myself, or have I been looking after everyone else?

If the answer is no… start there. It might have been okay to run on caffeine, adrenaline and a packet of crisps in your twenties but most of us? Can’t get away with that anymore even though we like to pretend we can.

And even if you can now, it's only a matter of time before things catch up on us, and usually at the most inconvenient of moments.

2. Adjust your routine to fit your current reality

The routine that worked in September might not work mid- end of November and that's normal. Winter changes our routines.

You might need slower mornings, shorter workdays, or more flexibility with how you use your daylight hours.

You might prefer to walk your own dog while it’s still light, and shift client sessions or admin later into the evening. You might notice you need more gaps between clients or a whole day without any to mentally reset.

None of that means you're unprofessional. It means you’re adjusting and managing your own capacity. 👉 Do this tonight or this week:

Look at your diary or calendar and ask yourself an honest question:

“Am I hoping I’ll have the capacity to make this happen… or do I actually have it?”

If your running on hope, it might be time to make some reasonable adjustments or let some things go temporarily before the overwhelm hits and takes hold. That might mean:

• Adjusting your working hours to suit your needs not just your clients’ availability

• Starting later so you can walk your own dog or take a slower morning

• Finishing earlier to avoid end-of-day burnout or create space for personal commitments

• Spacing out sessions more than usual so you’re not jumping from dog to dog or session to session without time to reset

• Delaying a non-urgent idea or project until January when you have more capacity.

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Sometimes one of the hardest things to wrestle with in Winter isn’t the tiredness it’s the guilt. Something I hear a lot from clients is the emails that tug at your heart...

The messages from potential clients who are desperate to sort their dog’s behavior before the chaos of Christmas.

The pressure to fit them in even when you barely have space for yourself.

If you’re finding it hard to adjust your schedule because you don’t want to let anyone down… you’re not alone.

But here’s the truth:

You can care deeply and still have limits.

You can want to help and still say not right now.

If saying no still feels impossible, or you don’t know how to communicate it without feeling like a terrible human I wrote a blog that might help: How to say no without saying no (communicating boundaries)

3. Shrink the task, keep the intention

As much as we all wish we could carry the same level of energy and capacity all year round, it’s just not always possible.

When your capacity drops, it doesn’t mean throw in the towel, hide under a duvet, or give up entirely. It usually just means your approach needs adjusting short term.

When capacity drops, the worst thing you can do is try to force your way through a task that now feels impossible.

The second worst thing? Avoid it completely and let the guilt spiral build.

But we have a third option: scale it down, and keep it moving.

👉 Next time you hit a “I can’t do this” wall, try this:

1. Name what’s stuck. Pick one task. Not the whole list. Just the one thing you keep avoiding.

Why this helps: Naming it helps stop the spiral. It gives your brain something specific to work with instead of an overall sense of overwhelm.

2. Ask yourself: Does this actually matter? What were you actually trying to achieve with this task?

A client booking?

Some visibility?

Clearing mental space?

Why this helps: It helps to pull you out of perfectionism and back into purpose. You can’t shrink the task if you don’t know what it’s meant to do.

3. Do the simplest version that still gets the job done.

This isn’t about giving up it’s about adjusting your output to match your actual capacity, so things keep moving without pushing you into shutdown. A few Examples:

• Behind on client reports? Finish one and send it.

• Can’t plan all your content? Share a client win and your current availability.

• Dreading your inbox? Reply to the one message that’s nagging at you.

Why this helps: Any progress is better than none. Sometimes, just lowering the barrier to getting started is enough to get your brain moving again. You might even find you get more done than you thought you would!

Bringing it all together

Winter is harder. there is no escaping that

It’s darker. It’s heavier. And some days, everything just takes more out of you.

But you don’t have to grind through it pretending nothing’s changed.

A Capacity-First business doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing what matters without running yourself into the ground just to prove you can. Reasonable adjustments aren't about taking the easy route. Reasonable adjustments are ways of managing your capacity. They are there to protect the human behind your business, which is you. So that you can keep doing what you love not just for this winter season, but for years to come without burning out or resenting every single minute of it.