Hi Reader,
Last week I worked a couple really long days on less sleep than I prefer, and at the end of it, I noted in my task manager that anything I completed those days would've been a win. 🏆
The rest of my week was a mixed bag of small victories and background tasks like mowing the yard and actually getting outside in the warm sunshine now that spring has officially visited New England again, carefully clearing hundreds of junk emails out of my "other" inbox folder, finishing some light client project revisions, and recorded and published the new video and blog post you're about to see below. I'm also in-process of a Loom-to-Tella migration which kinda runs in the background while I work — thankfully it's not video-by-video, but 6 years of content takes a pretty-hot minute.
None of that is glamorous. But it's real, and lately I've been thinking a lot about why that kind of week—where just getting through the minimum "must-finish" to-do list feels like a win—is so relatable to so many.
Honestly, that's been 'the vibe' for a lot us the past couple years, I think. We're all trying to navigate going back to 'normal' routines after the Covid shutdowns, at the same time all these new things are being thrown at us 24/7, AND we're now operating from the lens of knowing that this kind of work-lifestyle isn't healthy or sustainable longterm because it doesn't give us enough time to live our lives outside of our work.
But like, ...now what? 😂
I actually wrote about it in this week's Monday Mindset post over in the Club (you can read it here even if you're not a member), but the short version is that I stumbled across two pieces of writing recently that described something I've been feeling but couldn't quite name.
The first was a Substack post from Diane Whiddon (of AI Designers Academy*) about the specific type of exhaustion that's trying to keep up with AI — that whiplash of finally getting good at something, and then watching the internet detonate around something newer before you've done anything interesting with what you just learned. She named the uncomfortable thoughts a lot of us are thinking internally: maybe I'm just too old to keep up with all of this.
And then she says she refused to fully let that thought win. She pointed out that yes, the raw processing speed (the "absorb a new platform in twelve minutes" ability) does decline with age. That version of our brain isn't coming back. But it's a trade. She used this analogy which was really helpful: a match versus a blowtorch. A match is fast and bright and impressive in the moment. A blowtorch ignites differently, but it's compressed, focused, sustained, and it can cut through steel. You may be losing the agility of the matches, but you're becoming the blowtorch instead!
The second piece was an Oprah Daily article quoting licensed therapist Ellen Scherr on what happens in midlife when your brain starts doing what she called "the Great Unfuckening" — that point where your capacity to pretend, perform, and manage everyone else's experience of you starts shorting out like an electrical system that's finally had enough. She made the case that what looks like "not having a filter anymore" is actually your stress response system saying enough — that your brain is restructuring, recalibrating, starting to prioritize. Energy is getting more precious. The cost-benefit analysis of performing has shifted.
Both pieces were describing the same thing underneath: a brain that's done operating at maximum bandwidth in every direction at once—all the time—and starting to compress toward what actually matters.
I'm only 39, so I'm at the early edges of the age related changes, but I'm already noticing it everywhere (not just in myself). The pressures to keep up with every new thing just because it exists, or because some "big wig" told us to try it, though that has less of a hold on me than it used to. Apparently that's not me falling behind. It might just be my brain starting to aim more precisely at what I want to focus on.
I don't think this is only a midlife thing, either. A lot of you — wherever you are in your 20s, 30s, 40s, & beyond — are probably feeling some version of this in the age of AI, where fifty different tools get shoved in your face every single day. The exhaustion of trying to absorb everything. The frustration of watching other people seem to adapt faster than us. The growing suspicion that you need to stop trying to keep all these bonfires lit at once and figure out what you actually want to cut through.
I think an interesting solution might be committing to regular recalibrations—annually, at minimum—where you actually audit your priorities, your systems, your commitments, and remove things intentionally instead of just continuing to pile on. Because so many of us have been adding and adding for years without taking anything away, and all that does is guarantee that balls are dropping constantly. We weren't bad at juggling, we just had too many balls in the air to begin with. But if we checked in regularly and gave ourselves permission to drop A or B, pick up X or Y, and save Z for later? We'd realize we don't actually have to do it all at the same time, forever. That's just how everything gets marketed to us.
I thought that was worth sharing here, because it's a much shorter list than the internet wants us to believe!
Which, ironically, is kind of what this week's post is about too: what happens when you don't recalibrate or build something without the right foundation, and have to start over with better information (twice). 👇😂
