There's a particular kind of frustration that comes from forcing yourself to be "on" every single day. You might be writing a newsletter, planning a launch, or pitching an idea, and some days the words simply won't come. Is it because you're lazy or undisciplined, or more because you're working against a rhythm that your body has always known?
Your menstrual cycle is more than just a reproductive event. It's a unique monthly map of your energy, mood and creative capacity, and once you start reading it, it can become one of the most useful planning tools you own.
Four Phases, Four Kinds of Work
Think of your cycle as moving through seasons, just like Mother Nature, each suited to a different stage of a project.
Menstruation — Winter. This is the phase most of us are taught to keep our heads down and keep going, when really it's the opposite. Your energy is lower, and so is the buzz in your head. It's an excellent time for reflection, reviewing what's working, what's not, and letting go of projects or ideas that were never going to fly. Put off launches or actioning any plans.
The Follicular Phase — Spring. As oestrogen rises, so does your appetite for the new. Ideas feel fresh, optimism returns, and your brain is unusually open to novel connections. This is prime territory for brainstorming, research, and the early pulling together of ideas, of threads and mulling over a new project. Or one that needs a revival with fresh curiosity.
Ovulation — Summer. The time of heightened confidence, verbal fluency and social energy peak. You're feeling magnetic, articulate, and more able to hold a room with your ideas and presence. This is the phase for being at the forefront of your tasks: launches, pitches, recording that video you've been avoiding, or having a delayed and difficult conversation.
A word of caution here: because your energy keeps climbing through spring and into summer, it's easy to get swept up and overcommit while you're feeling capable of anything. Many women hit ovulation already stretched thin from a follicular phase spent saying yes to everything. If that’s you, enjoy the high, take the praise and internal satisfaction, but plan for the post-high slump rather than being carried by it.
The Luteal Phase — Autumn. Energy begins to contract, and for many women, so does their patience for chaos. What was thrilling in spring can start to feel like too much. This is a time of focusing on what's been done and achieved so far. When your inner editor is at its sharpest, and is ideal for refining, organising, finishing, and tying off loose ends before your winter comes round again.
If your cycle is irregular, or you're moving through perimenopause and no longer bleeding to a predictable pattern, this same seasonal wisdom still applies. Your mood, sleep and energy will still move in waves, even without the monthly marker to name them by. Instead, you could start to notice the moon phases as another kind of guide to map your signs.
Finding your Rhythm
Most of us were trained by school, workplaces, and a culture built around a 24-hour clock rather than a 28-day one (yet a 28-day calendar month is also incorrect, as most menstruating women know), and it is flawed and unrealistic to expect the same output from ourselves every day. When we can't deliver it, we tend to read that as a personal failing rather than what it actually is: a mismatch between the task and our personal inbuilt rhythm.
Learning to align your projects with your rhythm, based on your calendar cycles, helps you understand your energy input and output. It is not a female-faulty mechanism, but it is seen as one in a patriarchal world and workplace in particular that doesn't adequately recognise it and understand it as an inbuilt system in a woman's body.
Fine-Tune Your Approach
Put aside any apps you might be using to track your cycle and commit to noticing your own observations. Start simply:
- Track your cycle for one or two months, noting energy and mood alongside the dates.
- Before committing to a big launch date, check where it falls. If you can, aim for ovulation.
- Set aside your luteal phase for finishing work, not starting it.
- Treat your bleed as a genuine pause, a letting go and a space to rest more rather than a productivity gap to apologise for.
- Batch your work by phase rather than by day — save the writing for follicular, the pitching and recording for ovulation, and the polishing for luteal, instead of trying to do all three because the calendar says today's the day.
Your body has been keeping this unique rhythm your whole adult life. The creative womb is both a metaphor for generating new ideas and fresh plans, and is the tireless engine already running underneath it. Your invitation is to recognise it as your greatest tool and build with it rather than override it.
This month, notice your own pattern as it’s likely to reshape the way you plan your projects.