She’s That Founder
216 | The Mental Load of Leadership. Why a Lighter Calendar Still Leaves You Exhausted
Things aren't even that crazy right now, so why in the world am I so exhausted?
Hey, hey, hey. Welcome to She's That Founder, Thursday edition. These are the quick rants, kick-in-the-pants, velvet boot in your booty moments that represent me standing in the future, pulling you toward the even stronger, better, more powerful version of yourself, with AI as your co-pilot.
So that question that I asked, that is me lately. Here's what's so. My business is actually calmer right now. I have work, obviously, but I'm not in one of those seasons where I'm getting pummeled professionally. I looked at my calendar this week and thought, "This is great. I've handled so much worse than this."
And still, I am freaking tired. So I kept asking myself why. If the workload has gone down, why am I this tired? And then it landed. My workload has gotten more efficient, but my load has not, because here's what's running underneath. One son has started college, another one is applying, which is a whole second set of deadlines, and decisions, and so many feelings, and they all live in my head and in my heart.
My mom needs more care than she used to, and somebody has to notice that, and plan for it, and keep track of it. There's my marriage, which is one of the best choices I've ever made, and needs love and care. And the house, and money, and what money looks like six months from now and a year from now, and the business on top of all of it.
None of that is on my calendar. No meeting invite says, "Think about whether Mom's situation actually changes in the spring." Nobody blocks time to mentally walk through what happens if the college thing changes. It's just running all day underneath everything, because I'm the kind of person whose brain goes 10 steps into the future whether I asked it to or not. That's just how it is.
For instance, it is barely a month and a half into school starting for my oldest son, and I'm already thinking about how to pack his stuff up at the end of the year and store it in the city where he's going to college. Okay? Like, That's what I'm talking about.
That's how far in the future that I am, and that's just in that one area. So when I started looking at my clients through that lens, I realized this is happening everywhere. So let me give you the distinction, because this is the whole thing. Workload is visible. Meetings, projects, emails, deadlines.
Somebody could look at it and count it, like a neutral third party. Mental load is mostly invisible. It's remembering, anticipating, noticing, worrying. Holding the standard, knowing who needs what before they've said it, thinking about what's coming, watching for the challenge that hasn't become a challenge yet.
Your calendar shows the meeting, it doesn't show the 20 things that you're tracking before, during, and after the meeting. So you look at your week and think, "I got this. This is quite nice. Okay." And then you're wrecked, and you decide something is wrong with you. Your calendar is lying by omission.
How does that sound? Does that resonate with you? I catch myself thinking, "Nobody cares about this as much as I do," and that's not quite it. What's closer to true is this: sometimes it hasn't occurred to anyone else that there's something to care about. You're looking at Q1 while everyone around you is trying to finish October.
You're wondering what the pipeline looks like in six months, and you're noticing a performance challenge with someone before it's officially a performance challenge, and that's not you being controlling, that's you being a leader, seeing further out. You need to do that. That's what leaders do.
But when all of this noticing lives in one place, you stop being a leader and start being a storage system, and who wants to be a storage system? And please stay with me. I know I'm being silly, but just stay with me because the next part matters. Picture two people standing side by side making burgers.
Same process, same ingredients, except the owner puts one extra little bit of sauce on the burger she's making, and she's done it for so long she doesn't even think about it. It's just what makes the burger taste right. Then she watches the employee's burger go out the window and thinks, "It's just not quite as good."
And nobody ever told that employee about that little special sauce moment. Maybe nobody has even said out loud that the sauce is part of the standard, and that is what is happening inside companies all day long. Tiny quality decisions, nuance, judgment, and tone, the way you read a client, the little things experienced people do on autopilot and by what now feels like instinct.
You may not even know that you know these things, which means you're carrying information you've never given anyone else access to. And because you can carry it, because you're good, because you're tenacious, because you figure things out, nobody notices there's a missing system, including you. Your capability becomes the workload.
Your capability becomes the workaround for something you haven't built, and your nervous system cannot be the operating system for your company. Not if you'd like it to grow, not if you have dreams of selling it one day. So I am going to make this uncomfortable because I'm in it, too.
The reason this happens isn't only that everyone around us is struggling to keep up. It's that we like being capable, and lower level work gives us something leadership almost never does: completion. Answer the email? Check. Fix the deck? Check. Solve somebody's challenge? Check.
Leadership? Build the next generation of leaders? Okay, but when exactly do I check that off? Strengthen the company's reputation? Cool, is that a Tuesday or a Wednesday thing? Create a business that can grow without me. Well, I'll see you in three years.
So capable people can spend enormous amounts of time on work that they're good at because it hands them instant evidence that they accomplished something.
I do this. I hide in the things I already know how to do. It is so satisfying. It's finite, and honestly, it's so much more comfortable than being in that big ambiguous work that actually belongs to me and me only. Sometimes busy isn't just a workload problem. Sometimes busy is a hiding place. Now let's widen this out because it's not only founders.
It's any woman at a senior level. Think about how many directions you're managing at once. Down, you're managing down, so how are my people? Who needs developing? Who's struggling? You're managing up, so what does my boss need, the CEO need, the board? Did we deliver what we said we would? You're managing across.
The politics, the influence, the cooperation from people you don't control because you're dealing with complex human beings in multi-human being systems. And then you're managing forward. What's changing next quarter that nobody else has seen yet at home, kids, money, aging parents, logistics, the future?
Five directions, 5D if you will, and one brain. And my ear is tuned differently to the world when it comes to being a woman in it. The state of things right now adds another layer for a lot of us. I'm not making that the episode. I just refuse to pretend it isn't part of the weight. So no wonder you're freaking tired.
Seriously, no wonder you're freaking tired. Not as an excuse, as information. I'm putting my hand on my heart right now. Can I get an amen?
So I'm not going to sell you a fantasy. Leadership is heavy. Senior leaders carry more, and that's part of the deal.
You own the vision, the future that you're creating. You own the alignment, whether you have the right people, resources, and priorities to make it possible, and execution at your level increasingly means making it possible for other people to execute. You're removing roadblocks, clarifying priorities, making big decisions, resolving what your team can't resolve without you
So for real real, the job as a leader isn't to carry nothing. The job is to decide what only you should carry, and you can't decide that until you can see it. This is the shift. It's simple, but it's not small. The story you're telling yourself might be, "I'm tired because I'm not managing myself and my time and my to-do list well enough.
I need better boundaries. I need a better morning routine." What if that story's just wrong? What if it's just off-base, and managing yourself better isn't the thing, but seeing what you're carrying is the thing? What if your exhaustion isn't a flaw in how you manage yourself?
What if it's information that too much of your family, your company, your team, or your future still depends on your brain only to hold it together? So this week, instead of looking at your calendar and asking, "Why can't I handle this better?" ask a different question: " What am I carrying that nobody can see?
What am I remembering for everyone? What am I anticipating? What quality standards still live only in my head? What relationships depend entirely on me? What future am I the only person thinking about? What decisions keep coming back to me? And what work am I doing simply because I can do it?"
I'm not asking you to fix any of it today. I'm asking you to see it. Seeing is the door, and what you do after you walk through it is the work, and that's a Tuesday conversation. So here's what I want you to remember.
Exhaustion isn't always a sign that you need to get better at managing yourself. Sometimes it's information about how much still lives in your head.
And I have one ask this week. Think of the capable woman in your life, the one everyone relies on, the one who's got it handled, who always has, who you never really worried about because she never lets you see it. Send her this episode, not because she's falling apart, but because she might be the only one who hasn't noticed how much she's carrying.
And if the woman you're thinking of turns out to be you, listen to it again yourself.
Being capable is one of the greatest advantages you can have, and if you're not careful, it's an Autobahn speed ticket straight to burnout, because there's almost nothing you can figure out how to carry. That's the trap. And the question isn't whether you carry it, because of course you can.
Look at everything you've already carried. The question is whether you still should. Your calendar tells you what you're doing. Pay attention to what you're carrying. Your nervous system was never supposed to be the infrastructure, so take care of yourself, Lovey. I'll see you on Tuesday
