For years, Joey Hayes assumed he should be able to figure things out by himself.

He was used to operating at speed: ideas arriving in quick succession, multiple demands competing for attention, work and social commitments overlapping. Doing many things at once did not initially feel like a weakness. It felt like an advantage.

“I actually thought it was more of a superpower to do a million things at once,” he says.

But as one year drew to a close and Hayes prepared to start another company, that way of operating began to look less sustainable. He was not simply setting a new professional goal. He was confronting the possibility that the patterns he had relied on might follow him into the next venture.

“I was about to start another company,” he says. “And I didn’t want it to go like the last one did. I had to change something to be successful, and I wasn’t really sure what I had to do. I knew I had to do something.”

The question was no longer whether he could apply more effort. It was whether more effort, applied in the same way, would produce a different result.

The limits of doing it alone

Hayes had met Shorombo Mooij through the Amsterdam Founders Club. They had spoken several times before Hayes decided to begin coaching.

The timing mattered. He had reached the point where a vague interest in change had become more urgent.

“I really felt like I was at a point where I wanted to take more control of myself, my habits, my actions,” he says. “I thought I could do it on my own, but then I realised that I’m always thinking that way, that I could do it on my own.”

That belief is familiar among ambitious people. Independence can be a source of professional confidence, but it can also become a reason to postpone asking for help. The assumption is that the right system is one more attempt away: a little more discipline, another productivity tool, a better week.

Hayes had heard positive experiences from friends who had worked with coaches. He also felt that Mooij had shown confidence in him before there was any formal working relationship.

“You really felt like you believed in me before I even knew that I needed some help,” he says.

Still, starting the process brought an unexpected anxiety. Hayes was not only concerned about whether coaching would work. He wondered what success might require him to give up.

He feared that becoming more structured might mean becoming less himself.

“I had almost an expectation that somehow my personality would change,” he says. “It was actually sort of a weird fear of mine that I would become a completely different person.”

The imagined alternative was a narrower life: more discipline, perhaps, but less spontaneity; greater output, but less enjoyment. Hayes could picture the serious high achiever. He was less certain that this person could also be social, energetic and fun.

“I didn’t think that I could continue to still enjoy my life and get my shit together,” he says.

That tension became central to the work. The challenge was not to replace his personality with a more regimented one. It was to find a way of operating in which his energy did not continually work against his priorities.

From constant motion to deliberate attention

The changes Hayes describes are striking partly because of how ordinary they sound.

There was no single dramatic intervention. One of the most useful habits was simply planning the following day before going to bed.

“I just kind of woke up and it was like, ‘Ah,’” he says of his previous routine. “So that small shift there, just waking up and understanding what my day is going to look like.”

That advance decision reduced the number of choices competing for his attention each morning. Over time, it also helped him distinguish between an idea being interesting and an idea being important now.

“The best thing I was able to do is just really concentrate on what’s important and focus on that one thing,” Hayes says. “Just do one thing at a time. It was something I never did.”

He still has many ideas. He still works across competing responsibilities. The difference is that he no longer treats every thought as an instruction.

“Those things are always bouncing in your head, right? There’s always a million things, a million ideas, and you have to just shoo them away,” he says. “Instead of trying to act on things immediately, just write it down, get to it later. You don’t have to do everything immediately.”

This is less a story of becoming naturally calm than of building conditions in which calm becomes more available.

Hayes began paying closer attention to sleep, exercise, physical signals and the effect of caffeine. He reduced his coffee intake from six to eight cups a day to two.

“Now I sleep like a normal person,” he says.

He also became more deliberate about responding to how he felt when he woke up: whether to walk, stretch, go to the gym, rest or adjust the shape of the day.

“Just listening to your body,” he says. “Just being self-aware.”

Hayes and Mooij also discussed characteristics associated with ADHD, although Hayes says he has not been formally diagnosed. What mattered in practice was not a label, but recognising the relationship between stress, stimulation, impulsivity and focus.

When someone spends years in a highly activated state, constant mental movement can begin to feel like a fixed personality trait. Hayes’s experience suggests a more useful distinction: some of that intensity may belong to the person, while some may be amplified by the conditions in which the person is trying to function.

Structure without becoming rigid

Hayes had expected coaching to feel more prescriptive.

“I think I expected it to be more regimented, like super strict on things,” he says. “I honestly wasn’t sure that I would enjoy it either.”

Instead, he describes a process that combined accountability with autonomy. There were expectations, but not a pass-or-fail system in which one missed action invalidated the larger effort.

“You make of it what you want to make of it,” he says. “It’s really at your own pace, and you do the things that you feel comfortable doing, you feel ready to do, while still holding yourself somewhat accountable and being held accountable.”

That balance appears to have been important for Hayes. Too little structure would have allowed familiar habits to continue. Too much could have confirmed his fear that discipline required becoming someone else.

“It’s not one of those things that you have to do X, Y, Z or you fail,” he says. “Listen to yourself and make the mature decision, make the right decision that you think will fit for you.”

The deeper change was not that Hayes stopped having an active life. It was that he became better able to hold different parts of it together.

“I realised that I could have a really active social life and have a lot of fun and still also be a high operator,” he says. “It was really hard for me to balance those things earlier.”

That balance has had practical consequences. Hayes says his company has progressed well. He has become better at prioritising and created more space to think. He makes more time for important relationships and has learned to balance a full-time role with building a startup.

He is careful not to describe this as a finished state.

“I’m still figuring it out,” he says.

But the habits that once felt imposed now feel increasingly normal. That may be the more meaningful measure of change: not constant optimisation, but a different default.

The real transition is a mindset

Asked who might benefit from a similar process, Hayes does not point to a particular job title, age or professional milestone.

He thinks first of the person who remains convinced that another burst of personal effort should be enough.

“The person who thinks they can handle it all on their own,” he says. “They have the confidence that it just takes a little bit more effort to 180 their life, when it really takes a lot more effort. And it takes the support of a professional to really make that change.”

A transition can make the need more visible. Starting a company did that for Hayes. But he does not believe someone needs to be quitting a job or launching a venture before reconsidering how they live and work.

“It doesn’t have to be like a milestone,” he says. “It just has to be a mindset.”

That mindset begins with a recognition: something needs to change, the current approach has been tested, and repeating it more forcefully is unlikely to be enough.

“I want to be at my highest and best use as a person,” Hayes says. “I want to improve my life, and I want to do it in a way that is structured, that is meaningful, and that’s long-term.”

The useful question, then, is not whether you are capable of handling everything alone. Many high-performing people are capable of carrying a great deal.

The better question is what that way of carrying it is costing you—and whether the person you are afraid of losing might become more available when everything no longer has to happen at once.

When that question resonates, a conversation can be a practical place to begin.