Being Busy Is Not a Badge of Honor
Welcome to fall.
For many of us, this is the season when everything speeds up at once: fundraising, events, budget planning, board meetings, galas, back-to-school schedules, and 2027 planning.
Get your jet engine ready for the busiest time of the year!!
The question is not whether it will be busy (the answer is a definite YES!). The question is, How are you going to move through it?
In August, I completed a 21-Day Calm & Clarity Reset with Yung Pueblo and Cory Allen. It gave me a chance to think about urgency, technology, attention, mental fatigue, and the pressure to always be doing more.
One idea stayed with me… Being busy is not a badge of honor.
But somewhere along the way, we began treating a packed calendar as proof of importance. An overflowing inbox meant we were needed… immediate responses showed commitment… exhaustion became something to brag about.
Busy is not the same as effective.
Technology has trained us to believe that everything is urgent. Every email seems to require an immediate response and every notification asks for our attention. We feel guilty when we don’t reply quickly and our minds convince us that we are always behind.
But are we?
Digital pressure is exhausting because the work is never finished. There is always another message, request, or update. We spend the day calculating what needs to happen next; it’s like playing nonstop chess for hours at a time.
Do this long enough and, eventually, even simple things feel hard.
Corey Allen asked a question that made me laugh: What if we checked our physical mailbox as often as we check our email?
It would look ridiculous.
Yet checking our phones dozens of times a day has become completely normal.
So maybe the answer is not to move faster. Instead, it’s to become a professional “slower-downer.”
Do More by Doing Less
Recently, while working with a coach (yes, even coaches have coaches!), she gave me a challenge: Show up to meetings only 50% as prepared as I normally would.
I was stunned. WTF was she suggesting?
Could I really do that? Would everything fall apart? Would I look unprepared?
But what she was actually asking me to do was trust the people in the room instead of carrying the entire meeting myself. I could rely on others to participate, contribute their expertise, and help shape the conversation.
So I tried it.
AND IT WORKED.
More people engaged and more voices were heard. The conversation became less dependent on me and more reflective of the collective wisdom in the room.
It was a huge aha moment.
I realized my overpreparation was not always making the meeting better. In fact, sometimes it was just taking up space that others could have filled.
Just to be clear, I still prepare. But I no longer exhaust myself trying to anticipate every question and control every outcome before the meeting even begins.
I encourage my coaching and consulting clients to practice this as well — I’m inviting you to try it, too.
Some things to keep in mind…
It’s not about caring less. It’s about trusting more.
It doesn’t mean disengaging. It means moving with awareness instead of reacting automatically to stress, guilt, pressure, and anxiety.
It means learning to STOP. Stop what you are doing. Take 10 deep breaths. Observe what is happening in your mind and body. Proceed with intention and awareness.
It means before saying yes to one more request, first check your actual capacity. Not the capacity you think you should have — the capacity you truly have today. Our energy is finite, and every yes has a cost. It may cost sleep, focus, creativity, exercise, patience, or time with the people we love. Ask yourself: What am I saying no to by saying yes to this?
Rest is Not a Reward for Finishing the Work
The work is never finished. Rest is part of the work.
We cannot operate at maximum capacity indefinitely and expect our judgment, health, creativity, and relationships to remain unaffected.
The opposite of burnout is not simply doing nothing — it is having enough capacity to access ease and enter a state of flow.
But ease does not mean the work is “easy.” It means we are no longer fighting ourselves while doing it.
The better shape we are in physically, mentally, and emotionally, the better able we are to lead and serve others.
Here Comes Fall
Fall may still be intense. The events will happen, the fundraising goals will remain, the budgets will be due, and the emails will keep coming.
But we don’t have to move at the speed of every incoming request. We can move at the speed of intention.
So let’s put on our seatbelts and welcome fall with a different intention — one grounded in greater ease, greater trust, greater awareness, and greater flow.