Article · 2 min read
Logged In But Checked Out
You can spot it in a meeting before anyone says a word. Camera on, Teams active, calendar full, and completely somewhere else. We usually call that a bad attitude or a motivation problem. Research says something else is often going on underneath it, and it has a lot to do with hormones.
Women who are cycling deal with this constantly. Studies on working women have found measurable dips in focus, working memory, and self regulation tied to where they are in their cycle, with more than half of women in one survey saying their performance was interrupted by it that month.
Perimenopausal women deal with it even more. A 2025 study of nearly a thousand working women found perimenopausal women reporting almost double the work impairment of premenopausal women, driven mostly by being present but not fully functioning. Researchers put the cost at around 6,000 dollars a year per woman, and tens of billions across the workforce.
And men are not exempt, they just run on a daily clock instead of a monthly one. Testosterone peaks in the early morning and drops as much as 25 to 30 percent by afternoon in most men. That sharp, decisive 8am version of a guy can genuinely be running on hormonal fumes by 3pm, and for men with clinically low testosterone, the research links it directly to fatigue, low mood, and trouble concentrating.
None of this is an excuse. It is an explanation, and there is a difference. When employees and employers understand that biology, not just willpower, shapes when someone can actually bring their best thinking, everything gets designed better: schedules, expectations, culture, all of it.