I’ve spent nearly a decade working with clients and colleagues who are, by most external measures, very good with money. They’ve built careers or businesses that required them to be disciplined and constantly making decisions under pressure. And yet, some of the most financially stuck people I’ve ever spoken to fall into exactly that group.

I recently had a call with a client who is an executive at his company and spends most of his day making high-stakes decisions. This transcends beyond work because he ends up carrying the weight of his family’s needs too. Between medical situations, schooling decisions, taking care of aging parents and daily household problems, a lot ends up on his plate.

With all these constant micro-decisions, the big-picture decisions like his own finances and retirement were delayed. This is more common than people like to admit, especially among financial services professionals – bankers, analysts, asset managers, advisors. People who spend hours a day thinking about other people’s needs, often forget to think about their own. Life at this pace just doesn’t leave much room for the kind of focused, unhurried thinking that good financial decisions require. 

Build systems that don’t need your constant input

If this sounds like you, you need to stop relying on yourself and set up systems that do their thing without constant decision-making from your end. In practice, don’t wait for the perfect day to transfer funds to your brokerage account; instead, set up automatic transfers so the money moves right after you get paid.

The other thing that consistently works, and I’ve seen this with clients more times than I can count, is talking it through with someone outside your immediate world. When you’re the final word on everything, you rarely get to say “I don’t know what to do here” out loud. One conversation with an advisor or a trusted peer, where you actually sit with the uncomfortable questions you’ve been avoiding, is enough to break the inertia. You make the decision once, build the structure, and then step back and let it run.

Your finances need to be aligned with how much headspace you have. If you are living life at a fast pace and frequently bearing the burden of signing off on things, your finances should be set up to support you instead of demanding too much time.