I was sitting in a weekly body-doubling session with my VA the other day, looking out at the standard-issue Seattle gray morning, trying to articulate a new workflow for my podcast. My brain knew the information, kind of.. The data was absolutely in there somewhere.

But when I tried to pull it out and hand it over, it didn’t come out as a structured sequence. It felt like soup.

I call this “thought-goo.”

If you’re a divergent thinker, you probably know the exact feeling. It’s the sensation of having massive capacity and knowing your subject matter inside and out, yet lacking the internal architecture in that specific moment to give it form.

What makes this harder—and what I’ve had to try to accept about my own lived experience—is the morning ramp-up. For the first few hours after I wake up, my brain often feels like there is grit in the gears. Organizing my thoughts, or getting my brain and body in sync, requires a level of nervous system regulation that I just don’t have access to at 7:00 AM.

Here is the professional observation I share with my clients: We have to separate deciding from doing.

The Two Layers of Action: Deciding or Planning vs. Executing

When there is grit in the gears, anything that involves a decision requires an immense amount of working memory. It demands that we toggle between the abstract planning level and the physical execution level. For a brain that is still in booting up that toggle switch is slow..

But here is the both/and approach: 1.) my brain doesn’t make decisions well i certain states, 2.) Ofeten my work needs me to make decisions and: 3.) If the decision is already made I can probably execute.

If I sit down at my desk and my only task is “update the Notion database with yesterday’s attendance info,” the motor initiation happens. I can start. The friction is low because the heavy cognitive lifting—the I have the info there, I just need a prompt to execute and recall/record. the process. The meaning making and the prioritizing—was done when my brain rabbits were running in sync.

We often mistake this morning “grit” for a lack of discipline. We tell ourselves we need to try harder, push through, or find a better productivity hack. But trying to force a divergent brain to process complex decisions when it’s functionally unsynced is a recipe for burnout and frustration. It’s going against your grain, and it’s exhausting.

Strategies for Navigating the “Thought-Goo”

So, how do we build a functional bridge between knowing the stuff and getting it into a usable form? We change the conditions.

**1. Use Verbal Processing **
I need to talk to get the goo into a form. This isn’t a flaw; it’s a valid processing style. During my body-doubling sessions, I externalize the soup. I talk it out, and my VA acts as an external brain, catching the ideas and organizing them into a sequence. You can replicate this by using voice memos, speech-to-text tools, or simply calling a colleague who understands your natural configurations.

2. Honor Your Configuration Mode
Regulation before responsibility. If your brain needs two hours to boot up, stop scheduling high-stakes strategy work for 8:00 AM. Design your mornings around execution tasks that require zero decision-making. Another angle, taks that are easy or enjoyable and give a quick dopamine hit/win to help your brain sync/regulate.. Protect your trust with yourself by not demanding performance when your system is still warming up.

3. Set Yourself up for Success Tomorrow,–start with today.
Because I know the grit is coming tomorrow morning, I try to be the systems steward for my future self today. Ideally, before I log off, I decide exactly what the first execution step will be the next day. I remove the need for my morning brain to organize anything. Just as realistically, i look at a recurring Notion board that has all my repeating tasks on it and I can pick something easy or appeaing. Worst case: I jump onto a call and bank on habit to move me into execution.

Designing for the Brain You Have

Having thought-goo doesn’t mean you aren’t smart, capable, or meant for high-stakes roles. It just means you have a specific configuration that requires a specific set of tools. It means you need to slow down to speed up.

We don’t need to fundamentally change how your brain operates. We just need to build better maps for the territory.

If you’re exhausted from trying to force your thought-goo into someone else’s rigid boxes, let’s explore a different way. In coaching, we look at the mechanics of how your brain works—both the top-down strategies and the bottom-up regulation—to translate that beautiful, complex soup into real momentum.