Limits aren’t limitations, they are leadership optimisers
We’ve crossed a quiet threshold in leadership. Somewhere between the push for productivity and the mythology of high performance, we’ve begun to believe the memes and started treating people as if they were limitless. We began to speak about ‘capacity’ like a dial that can be endlessly turned up if only we find the right system, the right motivation, or the right piece of tech. But human beings are not machines. We are biological organisms with nervous systems that crave rhythm, rest, and recovery. When we override those cycles- individually, collectively or organisationally- we start paying compound interest on depletion.
The neuroscience is unambiguous. The brain can sustain about 3–5 hours of deep cognitive work a day before it begins to slide into diminishing returns. After 50 hours of work in a week, productivity and accuracy collapse. Past 55 hours, health risks climb: cardiovascular strain, sleep disruption, immune suppression. Yet in workplaces everywhere, we glorify the stretch, the ‘extra mile,’ the silent hero who sacrifices weekends and sleep for the cause. Or worse, are so jacked up on adrenalin and sympathetic nervous system energy that there is no discernment as to what limits look or feel like, work is cascaded down through the layers without an off switch or a no switch to the always on pipeline. As leaders, many of us model that behaviour. We call it commitment, but our people read it as expectation. It’s not sustainable leadership; it's people pleasing wrapped up in a social contagion of overwork.
When I teach trauma-responsive leadership, I often talk about stress not just as a mental state, but as a limitation on human capacity. The nervous system is binary: it’s either in a state of safety and connection, where creativity and problem-solving thrive, or it’s in protection, where survival reflexes take over. Chronic stress narrows perspective, reduces empathy, and erodes our ability to make nuanced decisions. The more we push through our own limits, the more we unconsciously push others past theirs. People-pleasers are especially vulnerable to this - leaders who want to be everything for everyone, who fear letting anyone down, who equate saying yes with being kind.
But every ‘yes’ without recovery is a micro-withdrawal from our nervous system’s balance sheet.
In my own experience coaching leaders, I’ve seen this pattern repeat with precision. The people most driven to do good often do so at the expense of their own physiology. They run on empathy debt. Their hearts are big, but their regulation is thin. They tell me they feel guilty resting, they can’t stop, that doing less feels like letting the team down, or that their people are so depleted they are better off doing the work for them - the ultimate leadership bypass.
But doing less is often the most responsible act of leadership there is. Doing less allows space for others to step in, for teams to grow, for innovation to breathe. Doing less allows our prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain that integrates strategy, empathy, and foresight - to stay online. It’s not laziness; it’s neurobiological stewardship.
What’s required now is a recalibration of what leadership even means. To lead well in this century is to understand limits as sacred, not shameful. It’s to design work around human cycles of focus and recovery, to normalise detachment and rest as essential parts of performance, not perks. It’s to look at the calendar and ask: “What is the real cost of this pace, not just in output, but in human system integrity?” Leaders who protect their own regulation create cultures that thrive longer and stronger. When people are well, they don’t just do more - they do what matters most, better.
The urgency is real. Burnout isn’t a badge of honour; it’s a system failure (or a failure to value the systems that value limits perhaps). Every hour of overextension without recovery chips away at the very neural networks that make leadership possible. The future of work won’t belong to the fastest, but to the most sustainable. As leaders, we are the stewards of that future. The question isn’t how much more we can do; it’s how wisely we can work within the limits of our beautifully finite, human selves. Doing less, done right, is not the end of ambition- it’s the beginning of endurance.
Dr Polly McGee is a Neuroleadership Designer, Facilitator, Author, Podcaster and Co-CEO of DISCO. Polly spends their time in organisations building trauma-responsive leadership capacity and psychologically safe, productive cultures; designing and leading workshops; and working with high performance clients in their private therapy practice. From leading fast growth start-ups and excelling in innovation to guiding digital strategies Polly brings a unique perspective to the table with an intersectional lens that collides neurobiology with scaling technology and person-centred leadership capacity across organisations.