The British Army protocol for overwhelm 🫖

I didn't expect that...

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"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire

Hi,

How was your last week?

As I sat down to write this edition, I didn’t know where to start. I’ve written 138 newsletters and this never happened before.

Every conversation I’ve had with leaders in the last two months started with the same thing. The thing that has become unbearable to each one of them, to me, and probably to you too:

The constant pressure to do MORE. It never stops.

First it was longer hours. Then open-plan offices for “collaboration.” Then Blackberries so you’d never miss an urgent email. Then smartphones with apps, project management tools, and dashboards at your fingertips. Now AI — and with it, a whole new level of expectations to perform.

If you’re not using AI agents, you’re behind. If you’re not optimizing with it, you’re wasting time. Teenagers are building businesses with it, and you still only use ChatGPT.

Why share this with you?

I’m a productivity coach. People expect me to run AI agent teams, use Superhuman for my inbox, work from perfect Notion templates. And I don’t do any of it. I work alone, on Outlook, on Excel.

Sometimes, it makes me feel old school. As they say, “behind”. Like everyone had figured something out that I hadn’t.

But I’ve learned to sit with that feeling instead of reacting to it. I use technology but not everything that screams at me. Urgency creates doing — doing that more often than not is work that shouldn’t be done.

The overwhelm was here long before AI. The obsession with more and faster created it. Technology created it, and now it’s promising to solve it. But if anything, AI raises the expectations even higher and deepens the cycle:

You’re overwhelmed, you can’t think clearly, so you overcommit. You overcommit, so you overwork because you feel shame and guilt not following through. And because you’re overworked, you’re overwhelmed even more.

Somewhere inside this OOO cycle, the work that shouldn’t exist keeps appearing and remains unquestioned because the world is sprinting, and you sprint with it.

What if the answer was not in sprinting? What if the answer to your overwhelm is in a cup of tea (or coffee)?

the why

In April, I attended the HR Week conference in Lisbon. The first keynote… I still think about it today.

Jitske Kramer, corporate anthropologist, author, and one of the most original thinkers I’ve encountered, travels the world studying cultures. How cultures shape people. How some cultures are obsessed with efficiency, control, and productivity. And how others are obsessed with kindness, balance, and the human soul.

She reminded me that in so many cultures we no longer have fun. We no longer enjoy the doing. We no longer take it easy because we stopped believing easy is allowed. Everything is fast, relentless. Everything is a priority. And because of that speed, we’ve stopped questioning what’s actually true.

I recognized my younger self in that description immediately. I operated on assumptions that every request from leadership was non-negotiable, every deadline was fixed, and everything in every meeting was an immediate must-do. I asked questions, but the wrong ones. How can I finish my to-do list this weekend? How can I prove I’m doing enough?

The more I assumed I knew the answers, the less I questioned, and the more hours I spent in front of my laptop feeling guilty of not doing enough. I clearly was overwhelmed, confused, and lost, and yet, more certain than ever there was no other way.

That certainty, Jitske would say, was my problem.

the how

She gave me a word to understand it: Liminality.

From the Latin for threshold. The uncomfortable, messy middle of change. Betwixt and between. The old is no longer valid, and the new doesn’t yet feel right. It’s chaotic and uncertain. What was, what will be, and what is all blur together.

She was talking about AI disruption at a societal level — the moment we’re all living through right now. But I heard something else too.

You live a micro version of that every single day. Your priorities change overnight. Last quarter’s strategy becomes this quarter’s cancelled project. A new directive arrives from the top. A reorg reshuffles everything, and suddenly, you’re one of the lucky ones to keep your job. But now, you have to do the job of three just better, faster, and more, as if the value you were bringing was never enough.

And instead of stopping to ask which of these is actually true, which work must be done and which shouldn’t exist, you add it all to the list and keep sprinting faster.

That’s your daily liminality. And it’s producing work that was never worth doing — work you’re not proud of because it’s useless. And inside, you feel torn, because you know it.

Do you know what most people do when they get lost in the woods? They pretend to know where they are and keep moving confidently in the wrong direction. Because stopping feels like admitting you don’t know — and that’s weakness.

Jitske offered a different argument: The bravest thing you can do when you’re lost is stop and admit it. And ask: what do I actually know, and what am I just assuming?

That’s what I’ve been learning to do in the last 12 years since I experienced firsthand what it means to pretend when you’re lost in the woods — when I experienced sight loss and was diagnosed with overwork.

Jitske shared The British Army protocol for liminal moments. When you’re lost and don’t know what to do next: make a cup of tea.

Not because tea solves anything. But because making tea forces you to stop: you slow down, you question, you move with intention. That pause allows a better decision to emerge. That pause is where you start to see the work that shouldn’t exist.

If you need help navigating constant daily change, one of the 8 mini courses covers exactly this (accessible when you upgrade your subscription.)

your play of the week

Make a cup of tea 🫖

This week, when the pressure to do more arrives (and it will), don’t start doing. Instead, make a cup of tea and ask which is which: what do I actually know, and what am I just assuming?

This question answered honestly will show you the work that shouldn’t exist.

(To master Good Busy, you must ask better questions. See how it works in only 60 minutes, join my free workshop.)

Because nothing changes if nothing changes. And nothing changes when we’re too busy, too certain to pause and ask questions.

23,000+ leaders are moving closer to Good Busy with The Good Busy Newsletter. If it helps you, refer it to a friend.

I know productivity - not illustrations. Stickman figures by Zdenek Sasek.

Thank you for being here.

See you next Monday,

Kate

Founder, TheGoodBusy.com

PS: Some work simply shouldn’t exist. Master Good Busy and free up that time for work you’re proud of and what (and who) you love after work.

Here’s how I can help:

• See how Good Busy works in my free workshop

• Free up 8+ hrs/week from bad busy work inside The Good Busy Reset

• Bring a custom workshop or The Good Busy Reset to your team