There's a version of me from a few years ago who would have told you that asking for help was just a skill she hadn't prioritized yet. She was busy. She was capable. She had it handled. What I know now is that it wasn't a skill gap. It was a protection strategy. When you are good at most things, when you consistently deliver, consistently carry the weight, consistently figure it out, asking for help puts you in a position most capable people never account for in advance: you

Every organization runs a budget meeting. Capital expenditures get reviewed. Headcount gets approved. Time gets tracked, protected, and rationed down to the hour. Human energy doesn't make the agenda. I've sat in enough workforce planning conversations at the Fortune 500 level to say this plainly: no one is budgeting energy. And that gap is not a wellness problem. It is a financial infrastructure problem. What the gap actually costs In 2026, 53% of managers report burnout sym

I took a real vacation. Not just time off. I went somewhere, unplugged, slept without an alarm, and came back feeling like myself for the first time in months. I was restored... for about 72 hours. Then the same emails. The same dynamics. The same asks. And within a few days, it was like the break had never happened. This bothered me more than the exhaustion had. Because I had done everything right. I rested. I recovered. I came back full. And the fullness disappeared almost

Gallup's 2026 data on women in the workplace contains a finding that should stop every HR leader in their tracks and somehow hasn't. Women are more engaged than men at work. And they are significantly more burned out. Same group. Same time. Simultaneously. If you're an organizational leader reading that and thinking those two facts are in tension with each other, you're right. They are. And the fact that most organizations haven't treated that tension as an alarm signal tells

There is a cost to showing up in certain rooms that never appears on anyone's balance sheet. Not the commute. Not the hours. Not the workload that gets tracked and managed and accounted for in the ways we've learned to account for things. I mean the cost of being the only one. Of translating yourself before you've said a single word. Of doing the actual work while simultaneously managing how the actual work will land. Of carrying the weight of representation in rooms that wer

One of the more confusing parts of modern exhaustion is that it often shows up in people who are very capable. They communicate well. They regulate themselves. They navigate complexity. They can handle difficult conversations without escalating them. They read the room. They think before reacting. On paper, they are the opposite of overwhelmed. And yet, they're tired. For a long time, I couldn't reconcile that. If emotional intelligence is supposed to make life easier, why do

For a while, I resisted the word burnout. It felt dramatic. Clinical. Final. Burnout sounded like collapse — like something that required a resignation letter drafted at midnight or a full life overhaul. What I was experiencing didn't look like that. I was functioning. Delivering. Leading meetings. Making thoughtful decisions. Keeping commitments. Nothing was on fire. On paper, everything looked stable — in some ways, even impressive. And yet, underneath all of that, there wa

For a long time, when I felt exhausted, I assumed the answer was simple: I needed more rest. That's the official guidance, right? Sleep more. Log off. Touch grass. Take a vacation. Protect your peace. And to be fair, rest does help. I've taken real breaks. The kind where you close the laptop and actually mean it. And for a few days, I feel like a functioning adult again. Clearer. More patient. Less likely to resent email notifications. But then, I return to normal life. And w