For months, I've been giving clients advice about systematic behavior change while ignoring my own brain fog.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
Here I was, teaching people how to optimize their performance while I couldn't think clearly past 3 PM.
My solution? The same thing most people do with health problems: absolutely nothing. I kept assuming it would just resolve itself.
Spoiler alert: it didn't.
As brain fog affected my work, I realized I needed to practice what I preach about systematic change.
Here's what I've learned applying performance psychology principles to my own brain fog, and the specific results I'm seeing after just a few weeks.
Brain fog symptoms can come at you from many directions. It’s a multi-faceted condition, and there’s no easy fix. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to put all the blame on one specific problem.
In the first blog post in this series as well as the SiPhox review I did, I wrote about how I’ve been struggling with brain fog for months and working on a solution.
Today, I’m going to go into more details on my plan of attack. The strategies that I’ll use to get back on track and keep brain fog away.
Each of these issues can be a part of the problem or the major contributor to brain fog. Instead of trying to solve everything at once, I’ll approach the plan one step at a time to test and identify what works best for reducing my symptoms.
These changes are also lifestyle factors that I want to resume and improve on anyway, so I want to roll them out bit by bit to make sure I can have them stick.
Why Most Brain Fog "Fixes" Fail (And What Actually Works)
Most people approach brain fog like they're throwing darts blindfolded. They change their diet, start meditating, buy blue light glasses, and take supplements all at once. When something works (or doesn't), they have no idea which variable made the difference.
This shotgun approach fails for the same reason most behavior change fails: too many variables, no clear feedback loop, and no way to identify what's actually moving the needle.
After years of studying performance psychology, I know better. So I'm treating my brain fog like a coaching case study:
one variable at a time.
measurable outcomes.
systematic implementation.
Here's my testing protocol and what I'm measuring:
optimize sleep environment
swap out nutritional disruptors and replace with enhancers like healthy fats and antioxidants in greens, veggies, and fruit
practice mindfulness
reduce mental clutter
forest-bathing activity - walk in nature at least 3 times per week for 20-30 minutes, but ideally daily
Optimize sleep environment
The change: No screens after 8:30 pm, dinner finished by 7 pm, bedroom temperature cool and dark.
The odd bad night of sleep is not the end of the world, but when my schedule and work demands are as full as they have been this year, it can still cascade into bigger problems when I struggle to sleep. I can almost count on something messing up a night of sleep weekly.
I’ve never been the type of person who can get by on 5 or 6 hours of sleep. Without a solid 7, closer to 8, I’m a mess of a human being.
So I’m optimizing my sleep environment by shutting down screen time earlier to read, spending more mindful time in the evening, and now that the days are longer and the weather is better, I can be outside more in the evening for time in nature. I also find that being too full at night can be one of the biggest disruptors to my sleep, and I’m trying to eat dinner earlier and reduce nighttime snacks and food overall to avoid food interrupting me as one of my biggest sleep disruptors.
The results so far: Better deep sleep numbers, overall sleep quality and duration improved, reduced frequency of morning headaches.
Swap Nutritional Disruptors With Enhancers
The change: Eliminated afternoon coffee, replaced processed snacks with high-protein options like Greek yogurt, added omega-3 rich foods daily
Nutritional disruptors are listed as one of the main culprits for brain fog. This can include causing blood sugar imbalances as well as limiting essential nutrients for energy and metabolism.
Some common disruptors include too much caffeine, processed foods high in sugar and refined carbs, and inflammatory foods that can trigger sensitivities. I'm focusing on replacing these with brain-supporting nutrients like omega-3 rich foods, leafy greens, berries, and nuts. Getting these nutrients consistently helps provide the building blocks for better cognitive function and sustained energy throughout the day.
Early observations: Afternoon energy crashes are becoming less severe.
Practice Mindfulness
Planned change: 10 minutes daily meditation, focusing on attention training rather than relaxation.
For many years, I was disciplined about meditating every day. It kept me calm under pressure, helped me to see clearly, and taught me to remain nonreactive. Then life got in the way, and instead of maintaining this important practice, I sort of forgot about it. I started to excuse myself for being too busy, or simply didn’t think anything about it. But meditation is essential to high performance and can help you tame your mind even when brain fog is swirling about.
We don’t give ourselves permission to be bored or to simply think for a minute or two anymore. There’s always something to do, always something to distract us. What this leads to is an intolerance of knowing what our body and mind actually need to think and perform clearly.
It will be part of my game plan to work on this again, although knowing that I’ve struggled to have it stick in the past couple of years, I don’t plan it to be the first change I make.
Many people, myself included at times, it seems, believe meditation is a skill that can be practiced for a period and then forgotten about. But research suggests and high performers attest that the practice needs to continue long-term for it to continue to remain effective.
My hypothesis: Meditation will help most with the "mental static" component of brain fog, so that I don’t have that feeling of having 15 browser tabs open in my mind.
Reduce Mental Clutter
Planned change: Maximum 3 active projects, single-tasking only, external brain capture system.
The state of Cognitive overload is very easy to reach these days when we’re constantly stimulated and can always find more work to do.
Do less multitasking. Follow a more appropriate routine for long-term work performance. Limit work in progress to 3 main tasks or projects.
Having better work boundaries like these will protect you from overloading too often.
When you have too many tasks and projects going on at once, your mind tries to hold onto everything, leading to mental exhaustion and decreased performance. The key is to maintain focus on what's most important right now while having a system to capture and organize everything else. This way, your brain doesn't need to waste energy trying to remember and juggle too many things at once.
Forest Bathing
Planned change: 20+ minutes outdoor time daily, no devices, focus on natural environments when possible.
3 times per week for 20-30 minutes is the minimum dose, but ideally, spend some time in nature and off of devices daily.
Forest bathing is a healing balm against many of the common causes of burnout. The importance of spending time in nature has been recognized since people started to move indoors and into cities, but it’s only been in recent years that it has been seen more prescriptively as a treatment for conditions like burnout and brain fog.
The term comes from Japan, where “shinrin-yoku” became an antidote to people being able to stay indoors at all times and never go outside. Workers were dropping dead from overwork. So, to remedy this, shinrin-yoku became the life-saving recommendation for reducing stress and overload on the system.
It seems too simple a solution. Get outside and you’ll start to feel better. But it’s an effective one, even at only 20 minutes, three times per week. As Michael Easter goes into in his excellent book The Comfort Crisis, to see even more improvements from time spent outdoors, it helps to also plan extended walks or hikes of 3-4 hours, ideally monthly, and 3-day backcountry escapes off-the-grid a couple of times per year.
What I'm Learning (And What You Can Apply Now)
Brain fog is rarely caused by just one factor in our lives. Instead, we let stress and chaos pile up until they completely engulf us.
I wanted to share my approach because it's been terrible to deal with this feeling. I'm not myself lately, and my performance in the things that matter most to me has suffered.
If any of these ideas for fixing brain fog resonate with you, incorporate them into your life.
A few weeks into systematic testing, here's what's becoming clear:
Brain fog is measurable. Track specific symptoms rather than relying on vague "mental clarity" assessments.
Sequential testing works. I can now confidently say sleep consistency was responsible for eliminating 80% of my morning headaches. Without isolated testing, I'd never know which change was actually helping.
The coaching principle applies to self-improvement: you can't optimize what you don't measure, and you can't measure what you change all at once.
If you're dealing with brain fog, resist the urge to overhaul everything simultaneously.
Pick one variable, test it for two weeks, and measure the results. The systematic approach takes longer but gives you a repeatable formula for when symptoms return.
I'll update on the remaining tests as results come in.
Sometimes the best performance advice is also the most boring: change one thing at a time and track what happens.