When May Hits Different: The Effort Tier Do-Over

027 If you’ve ever felt like May hits harder than any other month… this episode is for you.

Candace shares the familiar feeling of everything piling up at once. School events, teacher gifts, summer planning, work deadlines, and emotional needs at home — all landing in the same few weeks and all feeling equally urgent.

In this episode, Candace unpacks why May feels so overwhelming, why your brain treats everything like it deserves the same level of effort, and why you end up running out of energy before the things that matter most even happen.

You’ll also hear this week’s Do-Over, a simple reset to help you spend your energy differently so you don’t burn out trying to give everything your best.

Want to share your do-over moment? Email team@thesteadystateco.com or send a quick voice memo.

👉 Join my newsletter: mybusybrain.com/join
👉 Join the course waitlist: mybusybrain.com/plan
👉 Tap Follow so your next do-over is waiting when you need it most.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide mental health treatment, therapy, or professional advice. Listening to this podcast does not establish a therapeutic relationship. If you are in need of mental health support, please reach out to a qualified professional in your area or contact your local crisis line.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You know what this week is. You don't even have to look at your calendar. Your body knows. It's the week before May. And if you're anything like me, May is already starting to creep into your inbox. The end of your emails from the school, the teacher gift signup that has been forwarded to you twice, the camp registration that's been sitting in a tab for six days. The work deadline that somehow always lands the same week as the field trip. Why? The kids coming home a little more tender than usual. The summer planning conversations starting to happen in group tax. And nothing is even technically wrong yet. It's not May. But you can feel it coming. And here's the thing: it's not just that there's a lot, because there's always a lot. It's that all of it feels equally urgent. The teacher gift feels just as loud in your brain as the work deadline. The camp decision is taking up the same mental space as being there for your kid who's already tired. The reply to that email is sitting in the same pile as the thing that actually matters. And you've been giving all of it the same level of you, same effort, same attention, same quiet weight. And by the time the actual thing that matters needs you, you're already spent.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Proud of how you show up again. Because you're not the problem and you're not alone. Here, you'll find real tools and honest conversations to help you feel capable, steady, and like yourself again. Here's your host, Candace David, a fellow busy brain who believes life doesn't have to run perfectly to run well.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Okay, if any of that landed, you're definitely not alone. And quick thing before we keep going, if this podcast has been helpful for you, leaving a quick rating or review helps other busy brains who feel behind find their way here too. Thank you if you've already done that. It means a lot. Alright, let's talk about what's actually happening underneath all of that. Here's what I want you to hear. May is not harder because you're struggling more. May is harder because the volume is objectively higher than most other months of the year. That's not a feeling, that's just true. Look at what's actually on your plate this month. End of school logistics, teacher gifts, field trips, award ceremonies, last day of school parties, summer planning, camp decisions, child care gaps, work deadlines that always seem to stack right here in this month, final exams or testing weeks where your kids come home carrying things they don't even have words for yet. And then on top of all that, the regular stuff dinner, laundry, the dog, the bills, the things someone in your house mentioned that you said you'd handle, but you actually haven't taken care of it yet. That's not one season being a little extra. That's a month carrying the weight of two. And here's what's been happening underneath that. It's not that any one of those things is bad. None of them are. The teacher gift isn't bad. Is it annoying? Maybe sometimes. The camp decision isn't bad. The work deadline isn't bad. Is it frustrating? Probably yes. It's that they all landed in the same 30 days. And your brain has been treating every single one of them like it deserves the same level of you, the same attention, same care, same effort. So the teacher gift gets the same brain space as the work deadline, and the camp booking gets the same energy as being present for your tired kid. And then the reply to a low-stakes email gets the same focus as the conversation that actually matters. And by the time the things that actually need you the most show up, you're running on fumes. Because to you, all of it matters. You don't want to be the mom who half cared about the teacher gift. It looks bad, right? You don't want to be the wife who phoned in the reply. You don't want to be the woman who let any of it slip. So you give all of it your best. And then there's nothing left with the things that needed your attention the most. That's what's actually going on. It's not a discipline problem, it's not a time problem, it's a volume problem. And nobody taught you how to spend yourself differently when the month is carrying twice its weight. That's what today's do-over is about. All right. So this do-over is not about doing less. Rarely are any of our do-overs about doing less, right? Because when a busy brain hears we're going to spend less effort, it usually goes one of two directions. First, you hear less effort, and your brain translates that to, okay, that means I'm going to drop the ball and let all these people down. So you reject the whole idea before you even try it. There's a second one that I see just as often. You hear less effort while you're already past your limits. You are already stretched, you're already tired, and the idea of letting up on anything feels like permission to let go of everything. So you throw your hands up, you bow out of the school thing, you skip the work meeting, you stop replying to that group text, you go quiet on people. Neither of those directions are the goal here. We are not lowering the bar across the board, and we are not bowing out. We're getting honest about which things actually deserve your greatest effort and which things just need to get done. That's where the effort tier do-over comes in. It walks you through it in three steps. You ready? Here we go. Step one, sort into two tiers. Take everything that's currently sitting on your plate for this week, the decisions, the to-dos, the mental tabs you keep reopening, and ask three quick questions for each one. Question one if I half show up to this, will it cost me something I actually care about? Your reputation at work? Your relationship with someone close to you. If the answer is yes, that's a tier one thing. If the answer is no, keep going to the next question. Question two. Is there a real person waiting on the best version of me here? Not a polite version, you guys, not a finished version, the best of you. A kid who needs you present, a client who needs your full attention, a person you love who's going through something. If the answer is yes, that's a tier one thing. If the answer is no, keep going. Question three: will the world keep turning if this just gets done at a B minus? The birthday card you've been meaning to send. The reply to the email that doesn't actually need a thoughtful response. The form that just needs your signature. The decision that has five perfectly fine options, and you're trying to pick the perfect one. If the answer is yes, that's tier two. And if you've gotten all the way through these three questions and didn't land on a yes for tier one, then it's automatically a tier two thing. So when in doubt, tier two. Okay? We're not gonna throw everything into tier one because no, tier two is a default. Tier one needs your full attention. Tier two just needs to cross the finish line. And now here's something that you can't skip, okay? You cannot keep this tier sort in your head. Your brain will not remember on Tuesday at 2 p.m. what you decided Monday the day before. No way. You need somewhere to put it. It doesn't have to be fancy. A note in your notes app on your phone, a page in your planner, either of those will do. The back of a grocery list if you're a person that writes a grocery list down still. Throw it there. Just write the thing down and put a one or a two next to it. Or if you want to get super fancy, you can do two columns and have one side for tier one and one side for tier two. Whatever allows your brain to see it without having to hold it is the goal. Because the second your brain has to hold this tier sort and do the work of taking care of the things on the sort, it's going to default back to giving everything full effort. That's not a willpower problem. That's just how brains work with invisible information. Okay? So we need to make it visible. Step two, protect the first tier. Once you know what actually deserves your best, your job is to stop letting tier two borrow from tier one because that's what's been happening. The teacher gift has been taking up the same brain space as the work deadline. The camp booking has been pulling the same energy as being present for your kid. The low-stakes email reply has been getting the same amount of mental rehearsal as the conversation that actually matters. Your brain has a finite amount of focus and decision-making power each day. There's a name for it, right? Decision fatigue. We did a whole episode on this back in episode 25, the default decision do-over, if you want more on it. But here's the short version. Every choice you make, no matter how small, draws from the same well. What to wear, what to reply, whether the reply was warm enough, whether to rewrite the reply before sending it. That's four decisions on one tier two thing. And your brain doesn't know the difference between a tier one decision and a tier two decision unless you tell it. Left alone, it treats them all the same. So a busy brain in May is making hundreds of full effort decisions on things that didn't need full effort. And by the time the tier one thing arrives, the well is empty. I want you to sit with what that actually looks like for a second, because this is where it gets really personal and we don't clue into it in real time often. It's the end of a long day, you're at home, and your kid comes and finds you. Maybe they want to tell you about something that happened at school. Maybe they're upset about something and they need you to help them work through it. Maybe they just want to sit with you for a minute. And you want to be there. You really do. But you can feel it. There's nothing there. Your brain feels foggy. Your patience is gone. You're nodding along, but you're not actually with them. And later that night, long after they've gone to bed, you replay it and you think, What's wrong with me? Why couldn't I just be present for my own kid? That should be the easiest thing in the world. And you start to feel like something is broken in you. Like you're failing at the part that matters most. Listen to me. You are not broken. You are not failing. You spent the resource that being present requires on a teacher gift earlier that afternoon. Or on a reply that didn't need rehearsing. Or on a decision that had five perfectly great options. It's not that you don't love them. It's that your brain is not like magical. And if you spent it on tier two stuff all day, there's nothing left for the tier one moment when it shows up. That's what step two of this do-over is interrupting. So when something from tier two starts pulling at you, here's what you do: you catch it. Notice the moment your brain starts treating it like it's bigger than it is. The overthinking, the overanalyzing, the is this good enough loop, the pulling up an email a fourth time to reread it. That's the moment. And in that moment, you name it out loud or in your head. That's tier two. That label is doing real work. It tells your brain this is not where the resource goes. It interrupts the overfunctioning before it eats up a whole other hour of your day. And tier two doesn't have to happen right now. If a tier two thing pulls at you while you're in the middle of a tier one thing, you don't drop tier one to handle it. You park it. Add it to the list. You started in step one. Finish the tier one thing and come back to the tier two thing when you have the bandwidth. You're not being cold. You're not being lazy. You're protecting the resource your tier one things actually need. So that when your kid comes to find you at the end of the day, there's actually somebody home. Step three is a system that holds them together. So here's what I want you to do to have this work in real life. Pick a place you already look at every day. Your planner, your notes app and your phone, a whiteboard in your kitchen, a running doc and Google Docs, whatever you are already checking without even thinking. That's where this lives. Not a new system, not a new app, a new use of something you already touch instead. And in that place, you're going to keep one running list for the month. It's going to have two columns on it. Tier two items are listed on the left, and the lowered bar for those items is listed on the right. For every tier two thing that comes across your plate, write it down with the bar already set. For example, order gift is on the left. So on the right, the bar is click first reasonable option under $20. Done. Or reply to email on the left. And on the right, two sentences minimum. Done. Or pick the dentist for the kids. And on the right, find the first one in network. Done. Maybe we would like look at Google reviews, you know, first one in network with four star and above. And then done. Then when your brain comes back to that thing, and it will, you go to your list. You're not going to redecide. You don't rewrite the bar. You execute the bar that's already there. This is the part that matters to you guys. Your brain is going to try to redecide the tier two things constantly. That's not a flaw. That's what brains do with the open loops. This list gives the loop a place to close, and you're going to use this list all month. Add to it as new tier two stuff comes in. Cross things off as you finish them. And if you're having trouble coming up with items that go on the right for the bar, listen to episode 25 to see if you can create a default decision to help you fill in those blanks. Either way, the list you have is doing the work your brain was trying to do in the background before. And with this do over, your tier one energy gets to stay where it belongs. Here's your permission slip for today. Not everything in a full month deserves the same level of you. That's not a flaw and how you care. It's the truth about how a month like May actually works. You are allowed to do a tier two thing at a tier two level. You are allowed to send the short reply. You are allowed to pick the first good option and move on. You are allowed to skip the polish on the thing that nobody is going to notice was actually polished. You are allowed to make the easy decision instead of the perfect one. And you are allowed to save your full attention, your full effort for the things that actually need it. The conversation that's been waiting, the work that has your name on it, the person who's been hoping you'd really see them this week. That's not lowering the bar on yourself. That's spending yourself honestly and wisely. There's a different way to do May. Not by doing less, by being honest about where your best actually belongs and letting everything else just get done.