Respecting the mental load of your commitments
Factoring in the real cost in terms of time & energy
👋 Hello, my friends. First of all, just a quick note of thanks for all the responses on my New Year’s newsletter. So cool to hear from so many of you this past week. Sounds like a lot of us are reassessing our priorities and trying to get the right systems in place to have a happy, healthy, productive & rewarding 2025. I also appreciate the positive feedback on the 1on1 coaching business I mentioned. Sounds like I might be on to something there. More to come…
Anyhow, quick one for you this week, so let’s get right into it. As I think about everything I’m committing to in 2025, I’ve got “mental loads” on the mind — in other words, for every commitment I make, I’m asking myself: How much time and energy am I REALLY committing to?
Let’s discuss…
Respecting the mental load of your commitments
We all come into the new year wanting to conquer the world. We want better health. Better relationships. More success. More money.
That’s all good. It’s great to be ambitious. But it’s also easy to take on too much. And to quickly find ourselves overwhelmed. And let me tell you, I HATE to be overwhelmed. So I want to do everything in my power to avoid that feeling.
Now, is completely eliminating this “potential overwhelm” a realistic goal? Nope, but if I can minimize the stress I feel from being pulled in too many directions, I’m all for it.
One way to do this is to be more conscious of the REAL time commitment of any new project, role, or goal we take on.
Sounds simple, but here’s the thing: every commitment you make doesn’t fit neatly into its own discrete “time box.”
We all know that our day jobs don’t end at 5pm. We’ve all found ourselves lying awake at night completely stressed about a project or work relationship gone wrong.
But it goes well beyond work.
Joined a book club? It’s not just the 1 hour per month meeting up, you actually have to read the book! Sneaky stressful.
Coaching a team? It’s not just that Tuesday night practice and Saturday game, it’s researching plays, it’s emailing parents, it’s sorting out uniforms and rain delays… it’s all the prep work that goes into those two times per week when you’re actually all together.
Launching a podcast? I won’t even begin to describe all that goes into that, but know that the actual time spent interviewing guests is maybe one tenth of the total time commitment.
It’s not just time that we’re committing either. There’s hidden stress associated with all of these roles that we tend to underestimate.
Maybe you don’t want to go to book club but you also really don’t want to upset your friends.
Or maybe you’re worried about parents who aren’t happy with their kid’s role or playing time on your team. I’ve personally lied awake at night worrying about youth sports. It seems crazy but doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.
And I almost never get a good night sleep before a podcast interview. The sub-conscious nerves are fully at work.
So what can we do about this? Just shut it all down, assume the fetal position, and say no to any and all new responsibilities?
Nope. That’s not going to work. And funny enough, in one of life’s little ironies, if you did that, while you would probably encounter less stress, you would also miss out on life’s most rewarding moments.
If I think about the activities I’ve done and roles I’ve performed in recent years that have brought me the most joy, they happen to be the ones that have also taken a lot of my time and caused me a quite a bit of stress.
I’ve stressed about interviewing podcast guests but it’s so rewarding when I hear from a listener that the conversation helped them.
I’ve stressed about playing golf in a big tournament but it was rewarding to have (at least a little bit of) success.
And like most parents I’ve stressed (and stressed and stressed) about my kids and if I’m doing the best job I can, but of course you know there isn’t a more rewarding job than that.
I wish I had the strategy of all strategies here to deal with this. I don’t. But I do think there are some things we can do around the edges to give ourselves a fighting chance against being overwhelmed:
Look at what you are committing to in 2025 and see if you can identify hidden drains on your stress or time.
Once you see these you’ve got two paths: a) realize that you’ve overcommitted and find a way to politely backtrack/say no, b) if it’s something you want to (or even have to) do, that’s fine. Just go into it eyes wide open and plan your schedule accordingly to account for the additional “hidden” time commitment. This will go a long way toward minimizing that feeling of being overwhelmed. More to come soon on a weekly scheduling practice that I’ve found really helpful myself.
Do an energy audit of your commitments.
In recent years, the concept of managing one’s energy (not just time) has gained widespread acceptance among psychologists, authors and executive coaches. I’m a proponent of this idea, too. I spoke with Athletic Greens CEO, Kat Cole, a while back on my podcast about it. In my opinion, you can overdo this by trying to color code your calendar after every meeting or activity, but that’s probably overkill. I say keep it simple: You know the people and activities that drain your energy. Can you make any changes that would allow you to interact a little bit less with them in 2025? Similarly, you know the people and activities that light you up. Can you shift your priorities/schedule/roles to spend (even a little bit) more time here? If so, it could pay massive dividends.
Realistically, you can’t avoid all the stressful activities (and even people) in your life—the energy drains, so to speak. But with a little bit of forethought and planning, I think you might be surprised by how much of the mental load you can lift off your shoulders if you’re smart about it.
For me, making sure I’ve got enough “cup fillers” in my day and week is a critical part of this, too. I get energy from exercise, from walks with my wife, and from pickleball. So even if it seems like I don’t have time for those things, I’m trying to remember to make them happen anyhow because the positive effects on my energy lift me up in other places I need it.
Okay, I said this was a short one but it’s starting to get long (why does this always seem to happen?😂)… anyhow, let’s leave it there for now.
Hope you have a great week and maybe think about ways where you can be smart with your own time and energy.
See you next week.
Greg