Why I’m So Tired of Making Decisions in March

March is the sneaky burnout month

March is not loud.

September is loud. December is loud. Even May has an energy and vibe to it. But March? March just quietly sits there and drains you.

Every year around this time, I find myself thinking, ‘Why am I so tired?’ Nothing dramatic has happened. There is no crisis. No big reset moment. And yet I feel depleted in a way that is harder to name.

Winter fatigue is still lingering. The days are technically longer, but the weather is muddy and unpredictable. The kids are passing around coughs that never quite turn into full illnesses, but never fully go away either. Dental month just ended at the hospital, which means we pushed hard through February. Conferences are either happening or looming. School forms for next year start appearing in backpacks. Sports sign-ups, spring break logistics, summer camp deadlines.

It is not chaos.

It is overlap.

And what makes March so sneaky is that the exhaustion is not from one big event. It is from a thousand tiny decisions.

• “What are we doing for spring break?”
• “Did I register for that conference hotel block?”
• “Did I remember to send the Coggins test for Charlie’s horse show?”
• “Do we reorder more preventives before price increases hit?”
• “Did I sign that field trip form?"
• “Is my dog due for vaccines?” (As if the answer is ever “No.” We are excellent at preventive care… just not always for our own pets.) 

The weight of a thousand tiny decisions

In veterinary leadership, we talk about decision fatigue all the time. We talk about cognitive load and why teams burn out not from one catastrophic event, but from the constant layering of small choices on top of meaningful responsibility. We talk about how every unnecessary click, every redundant step, every unclear expectation adds just a little more weight to the day.

We understand this so clearly at work.

We know that when every appointment requires a new mental checklist, when every team member solves the same problem slightly differently, when nothing is standardized, the day feels heavier than it should. Not dramatic. Just heavier.

So we build workflows. We create defaults. We design systems so that good medicine becomes easier to deliver consistently.

And yet at home, many of us are operating without any of that structure.

Our routines look less like intentional design and more like a maze. We are holding the family calendar in our heads. We are tracking who needs cleats, who needs antibiotics, and who needs cupcakes for Friday. We are the reminder system, the logistics coordinator, the contingency planner when the babysitter cancels or the weather changes. All while answering text messages about rashes and limping dogs from the moms at the bus stop.

By March, that invisible labor starts to accumulate.

For a long time, I interpreted that accumulation as a personal shortcoming. “Why am I this tired? Other people seem fine. I should be able to manage this better.”

But that is the same mistake we make in hospitals when something feels chaotic, and we quietly assume someone just needs to try harder.

Sometimes it is not an effort problem.

Sometimes it is a design problem.

And March, for many of us, is full of design problems.

When structure changes the experience

At the hospital, when something feels inefficient or chaotic, we do not respond by asking everyone to push through. We look at the structure. We ask where friction is coming from. We ask whether we are relying too heavily on memory instead of building a system.

We standardize preventive care recommendations so they are not dependent on who happens to be in the room. We automate tracking so compliance is not something we have to mentally recalculate every time. We build templates so documentation does not require reinventing the wheel.

The goal is not perfection. It is sustainability.

We do the same for our clients. When families tell us they are anxious about affording care, we do not respond with pressure. We try to create predictability. Wellness programs that spread costs over time. Clear expectations about what is included. Thoughtful integration into the way the hospital already functions, so the team is not buried in extra reconciliation work.

When that alignment is done well, care becomes more consistent. Revenue becomes more stable. The team breathes a little easier because the system is doing some of the heavy lifting.

It is not flashy. It is just well designed.

And somewhere in the middle of this sneaky month, I realized I was applying that thinking everywhere except to myself.

If I believe so strongly in predictable revenue without extra admin at work, why am I trying to build personal wellness through sheer willpower and caffeine?

Designing something that actually fits

What if I approached my own well-being the way I approach hospital systems?

Not aspirational. Not optimized for someone else’s morning routine. Not built around an idealized version of who I wish I were.

What if I created my own wellness plan?

Not the aspirational kind. Not the 3 a.m. wake-up call, green juice, cold plunge, run five miles before sunrise version. No way am I getting up that early to eat raw eggs and go for a jog just because a podcast told me that is what high performers do. That is just not realistic for this season of my life (let’s be honest, probably not for any season of my life!).

So, what if I created a real wellness plan that fits into the life I actually have?

In veterinary medicine, wellness plans only work when they reflect reality. They align with how the practice functions. They are sustainable. They are predictable. They do not require constant manual correction to keep running.

My personal wellness plan needs to follow the same principles.

It needs to reduce the number of daily decisions I am making, not add to them. It needs to create small, predictable moments that refill me without requiring another spreadsheet or another late-night burst of motivation.

For me, that has looked fairly simple.

Protecting lunch three days a week, even if it is only 15 quiet minutes at my desk. Placing the grocery order on Sunday evening so I am not negotiating dinner at 5:45 p.m. every night. Taking a short walk after work when the weather cooperates, not because it is optimal training, but because it gives me a few minutes to transition before I step fully back into mom mode.

It has meant saying “No” to one extra commitment in March instead of automatically squeezing it in. It has meant building small defaults at home the way I do at the hospital. Simple meal rotations. Shared calendars that everyone can see. Automatic shipments for the items we always use so I am not remembering them at 10 p.m.

None of it is glamorous.

But it is infrastructure.

And just like in a practice, infrastructure is boring in the best way. It is reliable. It is predictable. It quietly holds things together so you do not have to rely on memory and momentum alone.

Leadership at home

March will probably always feel full. That may simply be the rhythm of this season. But full does not have to mean fragile.

When I stop trying to overhaul everything and instead build small, realistic systems, something shifts. I am still busy. The forms still need to be signed. The kids are still muddy. The emails still come in. But I am not carrying every single decision in my head at once.

Exhaustion in March is not a personal failure. More often than not, it is a signal that something in the system needs to be adjusted.

And just like at work, the answer is rarely more effort. It is better design.

If this month feels heavier than it should, you are not alone.

Maybe instead of asking how to push through it, we ask ourselves this question: “What would my own wellness plan look like if it truly fit into my real life?”

Predictable joy. Minimal mental admin. Sustainable care.

That feels like something I can say “Yes” to.