Different Day, Different Strategy.
Some days are “I spilled coffee on my shirt.” Some days are “I accidentally replied-all.” And some days are “If one more person says ‘quick question,’ I may legally become a swamp witch.”
The problem is, we often treat all Bad Days the same. We either catastrophise everything (“This is the worst day of my life”) or minimise everything (“I’m fine, it’s fine, I’m just stress-eating grated cheese over the sink at 10 pm.”)
Neither is especially useful. So what if we had a way of figuring out what kind of day you’re having, what your brain is capable of, and whether now is the right time to make life decisions, reorganise your pantry, or cry in Officeworks.
So I built myself a very unofficial framework because different days require different strategies: four modes, four very different ways to approach a Brutal, Bad, Better and Brilliant day.
BRUTAL
This is not a “push through” day. This is a system overload day. You’re emotionally cooked, mentally foggy, and operating with the decision-making capacity of a startled pigeon. Everything feels harder than it should. Simple tasks become administrative theatre. You open an email three times and somehow absorb none of it. You walk into a room and forget why. Someone asks what you’d like for lunch and suddenly it feels like a hostage negotiation.
This is the day when people often make things worse by trying to perform normality. You tell yourself:
“I just need to get on top of things.”
“I’ll feel better once I clear my inbox.”
“Maybe I should also make some major life decisions while emotionally compromised.”
Absolutely not.
Brutal days are not for optimisation. They are for stabilisation, tiny goals, lower expectations and minimal damage. If the only achievement today is replying to one important email, eating something with nutritional value, and not quitting your job via interpretive dance, you’re doing fine.
The mistake people make on Brutal days is expecting Brilliant-day performance from a nervous system that’s basically running Windows 95 with 48 tabs open.
BAD
Bad Days are frustrating, uncomfortable and emotionally noisy — but you still have some access to yourself. You can usually still function. You just don’t want to.
This is irritation, disappointment, overwhelm, people being weird, life being annoying, and technology updating at the exact moment you needed it not to. They are the emotional equivalent of wearing wet socks. Everything technically works, but your tolerance is lower, your patience is thinner, and suddenly Sharon’s “just circling back” email feels like a personal attack.
This is where people often accidentally upgrade a Bad day into a Brutal one. How? By adding unnecessary suffering like doomscrolling instead of sleeping, replaying conversations from 2017, deciding everyone hates you because someone used a full stop in a Teams message, or announcing “It is what it is” while visibly becoming unhinged.
Bad Days usually need interruption, not analysis. A walk. A laugh. A reset. A decent meal. A friend who says, “Okay, but have you considered that this is all a bit ridiculous?” Sometimes the goal of a Bad Day is simply: don’t feed it.
BETTER
Better days are sneaky. People don’t celebrate them enough because they’re not dramatic. Nothing magical has happened. You haven’t “become your best self.” You’re not journaling at sunrise while infused water catches the morning light. You just… feel more like you again. The email no longer feels emotionally loaded. The problem looks solvable. You stop narrating your life like a documentary about workplace collapse.
Better days are often built from very unsexy things like sleep, food, movement, boundaries, time, perspective, reducing cognitive load, and not trying to solve your entire existence at 11:30 pm.
This is where momentum quietly returns - not through motivation but through capacity. And that distinction matters. Because a lot of people think they lack discipline when what they actually lack is bandwidth.
BRILLIANT
Brilliant days are dangerous and not because they’re bad, but because they convince you this version of you is permanent. This is the day where you colour-code your entire future, apply for six things, volunteer to help everyone, start a side hustle, and suddenly believe you are the kind of person who “meal preps.”
Brilliant days feel powerful because your brain has resources again. Ideas connect. Energy returns. You feel expansive, capable and deeply optimistic about buying storage containers. `And while Brilliant days are wonderful, they’re also terrible at setting realistic expectations for future-you.
This is how we create impossible to-do lists for the person we’ll become on Tuesday when we’re actually back at “Bad with a hint of Brutal.”
The trick is not to distrust Brilliant days. It’s to stop using them as the benchmark for your worth. You are not failing because you cannot operate at peak performance every day. You are a human being, not a motivational podcast with a standing desk.
How this helps
The Brutal–Bad–Better–Brilliant frame isn’t about labelling yourself. It’s about adjusting expectations to reality because the right strategy on a Brilliant day is completely different to the right strategy on a Brutal one.
On a Brutal day: survive.
On a Bad Day: interrupt the spiral.
On a Better day: rebuild gently.
On a Brilliant day: enjoy the energy — but don’t accidentally volunteer for seventeen new responsibilities.
Most importantly, it helps remove the shame. Not every day is supposed to look the same. Some days are for thriving, some are for coping, and some are simply for not making things worse. And honestly? That’s still progress.