Right now, I’m pretty low on cognitive bandwidth. This isn’t surprising given that its the end of the year, the end of the term, and I’m now at the end of my tether!
I’m not worried about it. That’s how life goes. Sometimes things get hectic, and we lose the ability to show up as we’d like.
Sometimes I catch myself letting the guilt creep in. I start to get anxious about the fact that I haven’t trained today… or this week. What I’ve come to realise is that I don’t have a motivation issue. I want to train.
The issue I do have is a combination of decision fatigue, too many transitions, and mental overload. Funnily enough, when I put it like that, I feel a little less guilty.
I know I’m not the only one with a mentally draining job. After a day of fielding about a hundred questions, it’s no wonder that my executive function is spread a little thin. By the time I get home at four o’clock, I’m technically ‘free’ but cognitively spent.
In order to keep my focus and momentum for training, I have to reduce the friction in my life, rather than increase my output.
But, How?
Some days, the best thing I can do for Hail and I is to decide that we aren’t going to train today. This isn’t my preferred choice, but sometimes it’s the only option that makes sense. The key is, I have to make that decision without any guilt.
If I decide we’re not training, it’s because I’m putting our relationship ahead of our training goals.
If the day hasn’t been a complete shit sandwich, then I might decide that we will train. But, when I make that decision, it comes with conditions. The conditions might go something like this:
Micro-sessions
If I’m going to train, we will run our training in micro-sessions. This means that whatever we do takes less than five minutes to set up, and about five minutes to run through.
Manage State of Mind
This applies to both my state of mind and Hail’s. This should always be the top priority when training, but on days when things are already tough, this deserves extra special attention. I remind myself that I need to monitor and assess our state of mind at every step of the training. The second that things look like they’re starting to fall apart, we bail out.
It’s Okay to Bail
Read that again. Even with the best of intentions, shit happens. You think you’re all good and the next minute it all goes to hell in a hand-basket. Accept it. Bail out. Come back and try again tomorrow.
In Practice…
It sounds so simple it almost sounds stupid. But, when you’re emotionally, physically or mentally spent, it can be much harder to follow through with. That has been this last week for me.
It was my last week at work for the year. Yeah, yeah, cry me a river… something about teacher holidays, I get it. And I’m not complaining.
Regardless, the last few weeks of term are usually pretty wild at school. Everything is chaos, including the kids. I’ve been running education outside the classroom events, planning for what will be a very turbulent 2026 with a new curriculum, officiating in prize-giving’s and come the last day, I’m normally a shell-shocked emotional wreck… this year was no different.
Unfortunately, this meant that my dog training had to take a back seat. Again, that’s not a decision I made because I lacked motivation. It’s one I made because I knew the type of feral mush-brained critter I would turn into as the week progressed.
That said, I didn’t forgo training altogether. I simply adapted what we’d normally do to suit where my head was at. And here’s what that looked like:
Monday
On Monday, we went to group training like normal. I helped out with the 6 o’clock class and then made the decision that we had enough bandwidth to stay for our class at 7 o’clock. As it turns out, that was a good decision.
I opted to work on one thing: three-handed casting. The lesson I wanted to run with her took less that five minutes to set-up and we spent about seven minutes running the drill. Hail and I worked through a few small issues with both our states of mind intact.
Tuesday Through to Thursday
I did not have the time or mental spoons to train. I had evening work commitments, a befuddled brain and the patience of a bear with a sore head.
Guilt-free, I chose to spend a few days cuddling my dogs, preserving my few remaining intact nerves, and letting my brain and body recover from too much human saturation and not enough sleep.
Friday
By Friday, I started to feel more me again.
I decided that I wanted to train, but I was aware of how quickly I could reach the tipping point if I overcooked it. I opted for another quick three-handed casting session down at the park. I picked this because I felt like this was something I was familiar with, we had seen success in our last session, and I knew how to recover Hail if she made the wrong choice during the exercise.
It felt safe, and that’s what I needed.
Again, it went well. We had a few minor things to iron out and we did so without frustration or incident.
Sunday
I had a rough day on Saturday… pesky little emotion-goblins in my head again. So, with that in mind I went for the hat-trick for my last training session of the week. Again, it was down to the park for some three-handed casting.
This session was our best of the week. I managed to get Hail through the part that had been tripping her up. She successfully cast left-back, then left-over, and then left-back again without making an error! I was rapt! The session was all done in under about five minutes and then we celebrated by taking a big walk with the rest of the gang out at Greenpark.
The Take Homes
This week I spent a grand total of about 30 minutes actually training Hail. Split over three session that doesn’t feel like much.
But that’s the point!
On weeks when it’s just not your week, don’t aim for intensity, aim for consistency. Aim for little but good, not often but overly stressful or often but what-a-shitshow.
In my three short sessions, I was able to progress my dog through a tough lesson without compromising our states of mind during a week that could have tipped us both over.
Equally sensible, if I really didn’t feel like I had any room to play with, I could’ve said “bugger it” and not trained at all! And that would have been an equally valuable decision to make, too!
I can’t stress enough the importance of working within your limits. I didn’t know what this really meant until I learnt about the concept of Essentialism. I promise it’s not a cult, and I definitely won’t try to recruit anyone who isn’t interested in learning more. But, if you know me, you know how obsessed I am with Essentialism. This book changed my life.
Knowing what was essential this week, knowing what my limitations were, and what my outputs were likely to be, allowed me to have a tough week and still find space to do something with Hail that felt like it mattered.
Do you have any unspoken training rules or conditions you give yourself when you’re having a tough week? If you do, I’d love it if you could share them in the comments below. We’re a community that’s sure to have a goldmine of helpful anecdotes for times just like these.
Field Notes & Follies 
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