Reading the same email four times: perimenopause and focus at work
Short answer: Rereading emails is a common sign of perimenopause brain fog. Concentration and processing speed lean on working memory, which is sensitive to the estrogen swings and broken sleep of these years. It is usually temporary, and simple changes at work, like protecting your clearest hour and doing one task at a time, lower the cost.
You open an email. You read it. You read it again. By the fourth time, the words still are not going in, and you have a meeting in ten minutes. Then you write your reply, and read that four times too, because you no longer trust yourself to have got it right.
Women in perimenopause describe this constantly. One said it simply: "I am not used to having to read an email four times." If that is you, here is what is going on and what helps at work.
Focus is one of the first things to go
Difficulty concentrating sits alongside forgetting words and names as one of the most common cognitive complaints of the menopause transition. Up to 60 percent of women report trouble with word finding, concentration or memory. (International Menopause Society, 2022)
Reading for meaning, holding several points in mind and resisting distraction all lean on working memory and processing speed. In the SWAN study of 2,362 women, processing speed dipped during perimenopause and recovered after menopause. (Greendale et al., Neurology, 2009) Everything still works. It just costs more effort than it used to.
The cost nobody sees
From the outside, you look the same. Inside, you are doing a second shift: rereading, rehearsing names, writing everything down, checking twice, saying a little less in meetings. It looks like being organised. It is the work of keeping everything looking unchanged.
It adds up. A Mayo Clinic study of 4,440 working women estimated that menopause symptoms cost about 1.8 billion dollars a year in lost US work time, and women with the most severe symptoms were 15.6 times more likely to report a bad outcome at work. (Faubion et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2023) You are not the only one hiding it.
What helps at work
- Protect your clearest hour. Find the part of the day when your head is sharpest, often the morning, and put reading and writing that matters there. Meetings and admin can go in the foggy hours.
- One tab, one task. Close the other eleven. Switching between tasks costs more working memory than it used to.
- Read with a pen. Jot the one line answer to "what does this person want from me?" before replying.
- Templates for repeat emails. Fewer decisions means less to reread.
- Write meeting notes as you go, including names and actions, so you are not relying on recall afterwards.
- Move before hard thinking. A ten minute walk before an important call helps many women reset.
- Treat sleep as part of the job. A broken night shows up in the next morning's inbox.
Should you tell your manager?
That is your call. You do not owe anyone your medical details. Some women find it helps to ask for practical things, like written agendas, fewer back to back meetings or a quieter place to work, without explaining why. Others find it a relief to say it out loud. Either way, it is a recognised workplace health issue, not a personal failing.
Put a number on it
"Reading once" is one of the five questions in the free 90 Day Word Log. Two minutes a week, scored from 0 to 5, so you can see whether things are moving instead of judging yourself on your worst day.
Sources: International Menopause Society white paper on brain fog, 2022. Greendale et al., Neurology, 2009. Faubion et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2023. This article is for information and is not medical advice.