Hi everyone!

True story: I was told a while ago that I had "strong millennial energy".

When I queried just what the heck that meant they clarified that I had lots of hustle – always doing things, picking up projects, work work work. They said it was a compliment but I wasn't sure at the time and I am still not sure. 😐

But whatever you want to call it – hustle, millennial energy, being a workaholic – it can be super great. 

Right up until it isn't ...

Overwhelm is not fun

Full disclosure: I've spent the last couple of weeks in total overwhelm mode. 

The new job is great but it is still taking more mental energy than usual as I get up to speed with all the things. And on top of that, I also had a big deadline (my draft slides and talk for BA Life 2025 were due last week), two events, and all the other life stuff besides.

Long story short, I've been too busy to do anything other than work, non-work work, workout, eat, and sleep. Totally unsustainable and a recipe for burnout.

What's most annoying about busy times is that there is nothing that makes you less effective than being overwhelmed. When you're a stress monkey, even just writing that email is hard. Simple admin is scary. Small things become big things and next minute you haven't played connections in a week and are seriously considering a martini on a Monday.

And once you're in overwhelm zone it is really hard to change gears. Your famed ability to wrangle the noise eludes you, you interpret everything in a bad light, and you're irritated by everything your partner does (even if he's being super helpful and doing the dishes so you can get back to work).

There's actually only one way out: get help.

For me that was Dallas. She's the friend who did planning with me on a Saturday. She helped me stack-rank all the things. She questioned my priorities, challenged me to commit to less, helped me cull the list down to something manageable, along with a couple of more fun "if I have time and capacity" items.

The things that didn't make the list are many – this might be the first month in more than two years that I don't publish an article because Jimmy Thinks ended up below the commitment line. That's how ruthless I had to be.

My question to you this week is: What are you doing that you don't need to be doing?

I'm not saying that's an easy question to answer – quite the opposite. For the rest of the weekend after sorting my priority list I was in an absolutely terrible mood. I was relieved and less stressed about the work things, but letting go of stuff and admitting I can't do it all felt like a big ol' failure.

But the outcome was really worth it. So if you find yourself where I was, don't wait. Find someone you trust to help you do your own ruthless prioritisation. 

I've recovered now and am back to being my normal "strong millennial energy" self, which is a big relief because I had a chat with Adrian Reed ...

But chatting is fun!

One of the events I had was a really fun chat with Adrian Reed on Projects, Products & Business Analysis – if you're interested you can watch the recording of it on Youtube! Hopefully I sounded vaguely smart and capable and not insane (pretty much my standing wish for all social encounters).

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this (or anything else), so do reply to this email, DM me on LinkedIn, or send me a letter via pigeon. 

I cannot tell you how much I like hearing from y'all!

And until next time, stay excellent! 💖
Hannah