Ego exhaustion: when everyone suddenly seems stupid
There is a particular mental state many high performers recognise but rarely name. You are travelling again. You slept badly. Your calendar is full of strategic conversations. And yet, in meetings, a disturbing thought keeps appearing: why is everyone so slow, so illogical, so… incompetent?
This is not arrogance. It is not proof that you are surrounded by fools. It is very often ego exhaustion.
Ego exhaustion is what happens when the brain’s self-regulation systems are overworked. Decision-making, emotional control, patience, empathy and perspective-taking all draw from overlapping neural resources. When these resources are depleted, the mind does not become neutral. It becomes narrow, irritable and judgemental.
The neuroscience of mental depletion
At the centre of this phenomenon sits the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for executive functions: planning, inhibition, complex reasoning and social judgement. This area is metabolically expensive. It relies heavily on glucose and is highly sensitive to sleep loss, circadian disruption and chronic stress.
When sleep is reduced, research shows decreased functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. In practical terms, this means the brain struggles to regulate emotional responses generated by older, faster circuits such as the amygdala. Irritation increases. Nuance disappears.
Neuroscience also tells us that sustained cognitive effort without recovery leads to reduced dopamine signalling in prefrontal networks. Dopamine is not just about pleasure; it is essential for cognitive flexibility. When dopamine drops, thinking becomes rigid. People are no longer seen as complex agents but as obstacles.
This is why, during ego exhaustion, everyone sounds wrong. Their ideas feel poorly thought out. Their questions feel unnecessary. Their pace feels intolerable.
Psychology: from effort to contempt
Psychologically, ego exhaustion was initially framed through ego depletion theory, which proposed that self-control operates like a limited resource. While the original model has been refined and debated, modern psychology agrees on one thing: self-regulation becomes impaired under sustained demand.
What replaces it is not laziness, but cognitive shortcuts. Under fatigue, the mind relies more heavily on heuristics and biases. One of the most common is the fundamental attribution error: attributing others’ behaviour to their character rather than to situational constraints.
When you are exhausted, you do not think: My team is also overloaded and jet-lagged. You think: They are not very bright.
This shift is subtle and dangerous. Ego exhaustion quietly transforms tired leaders into harsher judges.
The business trap: speed without bandwidth
In business environments, ego exhaustion is often misinterpreted as decisiveness or high standards. Leaders who travel frequently, cross time zones, miss sleep and still push themselves to think at maximum speed are often praised for resilience.
Yet the brain does not reward endurance. It punishes it with reduced perspective.
Strategic thinking requires distance, pattern recognition and the ability to hold multiple interpretations at once. Ego exhaustion does the opposite. It compresses thinking. It accelerates conclusions. It reduces tolerance for ambiguity.
This is how leaders end up making fast decisions that feel confident but are actually reactive. They interrupt more. They listen less. They default to familiar solutions. They confuse mental sharpness with mental speed.
In organisations, this creates a secondary effect. Teams sense the impatience. Psychological safety drops. People speak less freely, which reinforces the leader’s belief that others have nothing intelligent to say. The loop closes.
Why everything feels stupid
From a neuroscience perspective, the feeling that everything is stupid is a signal, not a verdict. It signals that the brain is operating in threat-efficiency mode rather than exploratory mode.
Positive psychology research, including Barbara Fredrickson’s work on broaden-and-build, shows that cognitive breadth shrinks under stress and fatigue. The mind prioritises speed and certainty over insight and creativity. In this state, complex contributions from others genuinely sound worse because your brain cannot process them fully.
It is not that ideas are poorer. It is that your bandwidth is smaller.
Can leaders escape ego exhaustion?
Ego exhaustion is not a personal failure. It is a physiological and psychological constraint. The danger lies in mistaking it for truth.
Leaders who manage it well do not simply rest more, although sleep remains non-negotiable. They also slow decision cycles after travel. They separate strategic thinking from high-fatigue days. They deliberately expose themselves to dissenting views when they feel most certain. Most importantly, they treat irritation as data, not direction.
When everyone seems stupid, the most intelligent question is not: What is wrong with them? It is: What state is my brain in right now?
Because in leadership, the greatest risk is not making decisions while tired. It is believing your tired brain is seeing reality more clearly.
