Why 72% of Entrepreneurs Are Making Decisions Like They're Legally Drunk (And How to Fix It)

How the Glass Ball Method helps overwhelmed founders protect their most valuable asset—their cognitive function—without sacrificing their mission

I never fully understood how isolated entrepreneurs are until I started consulting with Social Enterprise Greenhouse.

Here's what struck me: SEG is one of the rare organizations that recognizes and actively combats one of the most subtle energy killers facing entrepreneurs—loneliness and isolation. They've built something most entrepreneurs desperately need but rarely have: a genuine community of peers who understand the unique challenges of building ventures that matter.

Working with their cohorts of brilliant, mission-driven founders opened my eyes to what most entrepreneurs are missing.

If you work for someone else, there are systems designed to protect you from yourself (at least in theory). HR departments that mandate vacation time (use it or lose it). Colleagues who notice when you're working too late and actually say something. Managers who (sometimes) check your workload. Company policies that create boundaries around work-life balance.

Perhaps most importantly, you have daily human contact with people who can observe when you're struggling and offer perspective.

Most entrepreneurs have none of this. They work alone, or with small teams who are just as overwhelmed as they are. There's no one whose job it is to say, "Hey, you've been making increasingly poor decisions because you haven't slept properly in three weeks."

No corporate wellness programs. No mandatory mental health days. No one monitoring whether you're operating at sustainable capacity. And critically, no daily community of peers who can provide the perspective that comes from shared experience.

SEG understands that this isolation isn't just lonely—it's cognitively dangerous. When you're making all the critical decisions for your venture without regular input from people who understand the pressures you're facing, decision fatigue compounds exponentially. The founders in SEG's programs don't just get business support; they get something even more valuable: a community that can recognize when someone is pushing too hard and help them course-correct before cognitive decline becomes venture-threatening.

Yet even with organizations like SEG leading the way, the vast majority of entrepreneurs still operate without this crucial support structure. They need protective systems more than anyone else, because unlike employees who can have an off day without catastrophic consequences, every strategic decision an entrepreneur makes can determine whether their venture succeeds or fails. When you're the primary decision-maker, cognitive decline isn't just a personal problem—it's an existential business threat.

This realization led me to understand that burnout prevention isn't just helpful for entrepreneurs—it's as essential as learning to read financial statements, pitch to investors, or manage cash flow.

But somehow, it's the one critical business skill that no one teaches.

You know that feeling when you're three calls deep into a Tuesday that started at 6 AM, your brain feels like it's running through molasses, and you're making decisions about your venture that you'll probably regret tomorrow?

When every opportunity feels urgent, every email feels critical, and saying no to anything feels like giving up on your vision?

When you're lying awake at 2 AM mentally rehearsing tomorrow's investor pitch while simultaneously worrying about your team's morale, your partner's patience, and whether you remembered to pay the website hosting bill?

You don't call it burnout. You call it Tuesday.

But here's what Harvard Business School won't tell you in their entrepreneurship courses: Burnout prevention isn't self-care. It's the most essential business skill you can develop. More essential than marketing. More essential than sales. More essential than nailing that investor call.

Because when your cognitive function crashes, everything else crashes with it.

The Inconvenient Truth About Your Most Valuable Asset

Greg McKeown puts it perfectly in Essentialism: "If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will."

But for entrepreneurs, the stakes are even higher than McKeown initially described. If you don't protect your cognitive capacity, your venture dies.

Not dramatically, not overnight, but slowly, through a thousand small bad decisions made by a brain running on fumes.

This is where entrepreneurs face a unique vulnerability that most business advice completely misses. Unlike employees in larger organizations, entrepreneurs don't have institutional safeguards protecting them from their own drive to succeed. There's no HR department monitoring burnout signals, no manager suggesting they take time off, no colleague stepping in to share the load when decision fatigue sets in. Most critically, there's often no regular community of peers who can provide the external perspective that helps you recognize when you're operating beyond sustainable capacity.

Research published in the Harvard Business Review reveals that entrepreneurs operating under sustained stress make decisions comparable to someone legally intoxicated—with a 0.08 blood alcohol level (Waldman et al., 2018).

Think about that! Your Tuesday afternoon strategic planning session? You might as well be drunk.

And unlike an employee who can recover from a bad decision with support from their team and systems, entrepreneurs often carry the full weight of these impaired choices.

Here's the entrepreneur's paradox: Your vision requires your optimal cognitive function to succeed, yet pursuing that vision often systematically undermines the very asset required to achieve it. You.

I see this constantly in my work with brilliant founders are building ventures that literally save lives and change systems. These aren't people who lack commitment or vision.

They're people whose deep caring and relentless drive are slowly eroding their capacity to think clearly, make good decisions, and stay in the game long enough to create the impact they envision.

If you're someone who struggles with these patterns, you're not alone, and there are specific frameworks and support systems designed to help overwhelmed founders optimize their cognitive performance without sacrificing their mission.

Why Your Brain is Your Business's Most Critical Infrastructure

Let's get practical about this, and think about it the way you'd approach any other critical business system. You wouldn't run your servers at 100% capacity 24/7 and expect them not to crash. You wouldn't ignore maintenance on equipment critical to your operations. Yet most entrepreneurs treat their brains—the infrastructure that literally generates every strategic decision, creative insight, and leadership moment—as if cognitive capacity is infinite.

It's not. And here's what makes this particularly dangerous for entrepreneurs: unlike employees in traditional workplaces, you probably don't have anyone else monitoring your cognitive performance or suggesting you might need to slow down. The systems that typically catch burnout before it becomes catastrophic simply don't exist in most entrepreneurial environments. Organizations like SEG are working to change this, but they're still the exception rather than the rule.

Neuroscience research published in the journal Science shows that chronic stress reduces measured IQ by approximately 13 points (Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013).

For context, that's like losing an entire night's sleep. Every day.

Your brilliant strategic mind? It's operating significantly below capacity when you're chronically overwhelmed. In a corporate environment, colleagues might notice and intervene. As an entrepreneur, you might not realize this is happening until you've made several costly decisions or missed critical opportunities.

And if you're neurodivergent—which 29% of entrepreneurs are, compared to just 4-5% of the general population (Freeman et al., 2019)—this dynamic becomes even more critical to understand. Research from the Journal of Business Venturing reveals that entrepreneurs with ADHD traits bring unique cognitive advantages to their ventures: enhanced ability to rapidly process information, make quick decisions under pressure, see novel connections others miss, and maintain energy for tasks they find intrinsically interesting (Wiklund et al., 2018).

These aren't consolation prizes. These are competitive advantages. Neurodivergent brains often excel at exactly the kind of complex, ambiguous, rapidly-changing challenges that define entrepreneurship.

The catch? These strengths only emerge when the brain has sufficient cognitive resources available. When you're running on empty, those superpowers disappear first. Without workplace accommodations or HR support that many neurodivergent employees receive, entrepreneurs must become their own advocates for the conditions that optimize their unique cognitive gifts.

The Glass Ball Method: Strategic Abandonment for Smart Leaders

This is where the Glass Ball Method becomes essential. It's a framework I've developed through working with overwhelmed folks who are building ventures that matter—people who can't afford to burn out because too much depends on their success, and who don't have the luxury of institutional support systems to catch them when they're overextending.

The method comes from author Nora Roberts, who said: "The key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic, and some are made of glass. If you drop a plastic ball, it bounces. No harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters. Much harm done."

But here's where it gets more sophisticated than the metaphor suggests, especially for entrepreneurs who lack external perspective on their workload. For entrepreneurs, especially those running social ventures or building mission-driven companies, everything feels like a glass ball.

Every opportunity could be the breakthrough. Every meeting could change everything. Every email could contain the connection that transforms your venture.

Without colleagues or managers to provide perspective, this feeling can become overwhelming and paralyzing.

This is where Oliver Burkeman's revolutionary insight from Four Thousand Weeks becomes crucial: You literally cannot do everything. Not because you're not committed enough or smart enough or working hard enough. Because time is finite. You have approximately 4,000 weeks in your entire life. Even less for your working years.

The goal of "getting on top of everything" isn't just unrealistic—it's mathematically impossible. Once you radically accept this truth, you become free to choose what actually matters. But for entrepreneurs, this acceptance feels like quitting. Your vision depends on believing the impossible is possible, right?

Here's the paradox: Accepting finite time and energy actually increases your capacity to achieve the impossible, because it forces strategic focus on what truly moves the needle.

The Hidden Energy Drains That Are Killing Your Performance

There's another layer to this that most business advice completely ignores, and it's particularly relevant for entrepreneurs who don't have workplace support for emotional processing: unprocessed emotions are massive energy drains that compound cognitive scarcity.

Stop and really read that. Take it in. The greatest business asset you have is your ability to make good decisions. The way you approach emotions — not repressing, supressing, or exploding, but feeling and listening and honoring (save your eye rolls, friend) is an ESSENTIAL business skill.

Think about the devastating feeling after a tough investor call that went poorly. The strain on relationships as your venture demands more time and attention. The grief of missed opportunities or paths not taken. The rage when someone doesn't understand your vision. The guilt about taking time away from your family. The fear that you're not moving fast enough while others are suffering.

Most entrepreneurs handle these feelings the same way: they don't.

They push through, project confidence, and keep moving. But here's what they don't realize, and what no work bestie is there to help them understand: your body will keep sending these emotional signals until they're processed. That knot in your stomach during pitch meetings? That's unprocessed anxiety. The irritability that comes out sideways with your partner? That's often unprocessed frustration from business challenges seeking expression.

In traditional workplaces, employees might have access to employee assistance programs, workplace counselors, or colleagues who normalize talking about stress.

Entrepreneurs typically have none of these resources, which means emotional processing becomes yet another skill they must develop independently. This is one reason why communities like those fostered by SEG become so valuable—they provide safe spaces where entrepreneurs can process these challenging emotions with people who truly understand the pressures they're facing.

Emotions aren't moral failures—they're information.

Research shows that stressed people experience higher levels of rage and depression not because they're weak, but because stress hormones literally change brain chemistry (Freeman et al., 2019). Your anger after a setback isn't a character flaw; it's information that a boundary was violated or a need wasn't met.

For social entrepreneurs and mission-driven founders, this gets more complex because you may feel guilty about having difficult emotions when you're trying to help others. But here's the truth: your emotional sustainability is part of your mission sustainability. You can't serve others effectively while running on emotional fumes any more than you can make good strategic decisions while cognitively depleted.

If you're recognizing these patterns and want to explore frameworks specifically designed for entrepreneurs who struggle with emotional processing while building demanding ventures, there are comprehensive approaches that address both the cognitive and emotional aspects of sustainable high performance.

Building Your Personal Sustainability Canvas

Just as you've used frameworks to design your venture, sustainable high performance requires intentional design. I call this the Personal Sustainability Canvas, and it addresses six critical areas that are particularly important for entrepreneurs who must self-manage without institutional support:

Energy Sources vs. Energy Drains: What activities, environments, and interactions reliably generate mental clarity versus what consistently depletes these resources? For neurodivergent entrepreneurs, this might include recognizing that certain sensory environments or social demands are particularly taxing, while specific types of focused work or movement are particularly restorative. Without workplace accommodations, you must become expert at creating these conditions for yourself.

Glass Ball Identification: Which responsibilities truly cannot be dropped without significant consequences? Challenge yourself here, especially since you likely don't have colleagues helping you gain perspective on what's truly essential. Is this actually glass, or does it just feel urgent because you haven't accepted that you can't do everything? Your core relationships, health, and key operational functions are likely glass. That additional networking event or the perfect promotional materials might be plastic.

Plastic Ball Liberation: What can bounce temporarily without catastrophic damage? For mission-driven entrepreneurs, this might include the perfect social media presence, attending every possible conference, or responding immediately to every inquiry. Remember: in a finite life, some good opportunities must be abandoned so the great ones can flourish.

Recovery System Design: What minimum effective doses restore your cognitive function? Research from Stanford's Behavior Design Lab shows even 2-5 minute micro-recovery practices can reset cognitive function if they match your specific needs. This might be movement, silence, sensory breaks, or cognitive switching activities. Since you don't have mandatory break policies, you must design these systems yourself.

Decision Filters & Boundary Scripts: Language that helps you protect your cognitive resources while honoring your mission. For example: "Given that I can't do everything, does this align with my highest priorities?" or "I'm fully committed to [mission], which means I need to be strategic about where I direct my energy."

Emotional Processing Triggers: Simple protocols for handling difficult business emotions before they become ongoing drains. This might be: "After difficult calls, I take 5 minutes to acknowledge whatever came up rather than immediately moving to the next task."

The Neurodivergent Advantage (When Properly Supported)

If you're someone whose brain works differently—if you struggle with traditional corporate environments, thrive on novelty, feel energized by risk-taking and creative problem-solving—you're not just in good company among entrepreneurs. You may have specific cognitive advantages that make you particularly suited for entrepreneurial success, especially when you learn to create the support systems that traditional workplaces might have provided.

The research is compelling: entrepreneurs with ADHD traits demonstrate enhanced divergent thinking, greater tolerance for ambiguity, and superior performance in rapidly changing environments (Wiklund et al., 2018). They show increased willingness to take calculated risks, enhanced pattern recognition across disparate information sources, and the ability to maintain intense focus on intrinsically interesting challenges for extended periods.

These aren't accommodations or consolation prizes. These are competitive advantages. Your brain's tendency to make novel connections, see opportunities others miss, and maintain energy for complex challenges that would exhaust neurotypical thinkers—these are exactly the qualities that drive breakthrough innovations and successful ventures.

The key insight? These strengths only emerge when your unique cognitive patterns are supported rather than suppressed. When you try to force your brain to operate like a neurotypical brain, you not only exhaust yourself—you lose access to your cognitive superpowers.

This means that for neurodivergent entrepreneurs, protecting your authentic operating style isn't self-indulgence. It's strategic optimization of your most valuable business asset. And since you likely don't have HR departments creating accommodations for you, this optimization becomes a critical entrepreneurial skill.

The Strategic Implementation: Tiny Experiments for Immediate Impact

Stanford behavior scientist BJ Fogg's research reveals that tiny habits—changes so small they seem almost trivial—are far more likely to stick than ambitious transformations (Fogg, 2020). For entrepreneurs who struggle with traditional habit formation approaches and don't have workplace structures supporting behavior change, this is particularly important.

The key is designing experiments that honor both your finite time and your need for emotional sustainability. Here are three frameworks that consistently work:

The Strategic Pause Practice: Before any meeting or decision, take 60 seconds to ask: "Is this a glass ball that requires my unique contribution, or could someone else handle this?" and "What am I feeling right now that might affect this interaction?" This simple practice helps prevent both poor delegation and emotional reactivity.

The Authenticity Protocol: Instead of exhausting yourself trying to appear "professional" in ways that don't match your natural communication style, develop specific ways to present your unique strengths as advantages. For neurodivergent entrepreneurs, this might mean framing your detailed analysis style as thoroughness rather than hiding it.

The Mission Filter: Every opportunity must directly serve your core mission AND be sustainable for your energy levels. This helps mission-driven entrepreneurs avoid the trap of saying yes to everything related to their cause, which ultimately undermines their capacity to serve that cause effectively.

Why This Matters More Than Your Marketing Strategy

Here's what most entrepreneurship advice gets wrong: it treats burnout prevention as an afterthought, something to address after you've built your venture. But research consistently shows that entrepreneurs who build sustainable practices from the beginning consistently outperform those who burn out and recover in cycles.

This isn't just about avoiding breakdown—it's about maximizing your unique cognitive contributions over the long term. When Steve Jobs did his most important thinking while walking, when Warren Buffett spends hours just sitting and reading, these weren't indulgences. They were strategic investments in their most valuable asset: their cognitive clarity.

For social entrepreneurs and mission-driven founders, this becomes even more critical. Your venture exists to solve problems that matter. People are counting on your success. The world needs what you're building. This means you literally cannot afford to operate at suboptimal cognitive capacity. Every strategic decision, every creative breakthrough, every leadership moment requires you to be functioning at your best.

The founders I work with at Social Enterprise Greenhouse understand this intuitively. They're building ventures that address homelessness, climate change, educational inequity, healthcare access—challenges that demand both fierce commitment and sustainable execution. They can't afford to burn out not because they're selfish, but because their missions are too important. What makes SEG's approach so valuable is that they've recognized this dynamic and built community structures that help prevent isolation-driven burnout before it undermines these critical ventures.

Beyond the Blog: Your Next Strategic Move

If you're recognizing yourself in these patterns—if you're someone who runs hot, feels constantly stretched thin, struggles with the endless feeling that there's too much to do and not enough time—this isn't a personal failing. It's a predictable outcome of operating in environments that demand high cognitive performance while providing inadequate support for the biological and emotional needs that sustain that performance.

The frameworks I've shared today are starting points, designed to create awareness and provide immediately actionable tools. But here's the reality: there's so much depth we can't cover in any single blog post that individuals need for truly personalized, sustainable change.

Your specific brain, your particular venture challenges, your unique life circumstances, your individual patterns of stress and recovery—these all require customized approaches that go far beyond general frameworks. In my intensive coaching work, we develop sophisticated systems for flow state optimization, emotional processing protocols, mission-aligned boundary architecture, and strategic decision-making frameworks tailored to your specific cognitive patterns and venture demands.

The goal isn't to become someone else. It's to optimize your authentic self for sustainable high performance while building practices that protect your most valuable asset—your cognitive clarity and creative capacity—within the beautiful reality of finite time and infinite possibilities.

Because the world needs what you're building. And it needs you to stay in the game long enough to build it.

If you're ready to go deeper into developing sustainable high performance systems tailored to your unique patterns and venture demands, you can explore more resources and frameworks on my blog or learn about working together through my coaching programs designed specifically for overwhelmed entrepreneurs who can't afford to burn out.

References:

Fogg, B.J. (2020). Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Freeman, M.A., Staudenmaier, P.J., Zisser, M.R. et al. (2019). The prevalence and co-occurrence of psychiatric conditions among entrepreneurs and their families. Small Business Economics, 53, 323–342.

McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Crown Business.

Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Times Books.

Waldman, D., et al. (2018). The biological effects of entrepreneurial stress on decision quality. Harvard Business Review Research Report.

Wiklund, J., et al. (2018). ADHD symptoms and entrepreneurial behavior. Journal of Business Venturing, 33(5), 627-644.