It might be that you don’t understand aspects of what’s going on at work or you’re misaligned somewhere. But there’s a good chance that you intuitively know that there’s some paradigm you’re working from that’s not tracking reality.

When some part of you knows something is wrong, the story about the work saps more energy than the work itself. Your tension may not be about you, but instead the fact that you’re dealing with an epicycle.

I’m lifting the word “epicycle” from astronomy and the philosophy of science. It comes from a centuries-long stretch where brilliant people collectively built an enormous amount of work to avoid changing one wrong idea.

The History of Epicycles

Before astronomers realized during the Scientific Revolution that the Earth orbits the sun, they operated under two assumptions from Ptolemaic and Platonic thinking: (1) the Earth was the universe’s center and (2) celestial bodies moved in perfect circular orbits.

The circle wasn’t a random geometric choice. It was a philosophical choice because heavenly objects were perfect and the circle was a perfect form. So it was axiomatic that we had circles moving in circles.

Celestial bodies moving in circular orbits at uniform (perfect) speed allowed us to mathematically predict their positions. The problem was that the planets didn’t show up where the math said that they should.

The astronomers didn’t change their models, though. They added complexity — small circular orbits on larger ones — called epicycles. Voila! Circular bodies still moved in circles, but they were circles on circles now.

One epicycle didn’t fix the problem, so they added more circles. The math got ever more complicated but still didn’t work.

Copernicus moved the Earth out of the center but kept the perfect circles, so his model still needed some epicycles. His move made the epicycle model more accurate, but it was Kepler’s move that removed the need for epicycles entirely.

An epicycle is what we build when reality contradicts our beliefs but we add work to maintain the beliefs rather than update them. Beliefs, models, and paradigms are often wrong and that’s fine.

The problem is the effort needed to maintain a belief. That’s where the exhaustion and suffering come from.

Why We Keep Building Epicycles

All beliefs and scientific models are provisional. The history of human knowledge is largely a history of good-enough models being replaced by better ones. The scientists and thinkers who built the good-enough models weren’t fools — they worked with what they had. Holding your models lightly and staying open to revision is generally good intellectual hygiene.

One of my favorite quotes attributed1 to Bertrand Russell points at this:

At some point, we stop being open to revision. It’s not just that we can’t see the beliefs we’re holding tightly to; we become hostile to questioning them.

When something isn’t working, we can either update the model or add an epicycle. Most of the time, we add the epicycle.

We do this because models aren’t just ideas. They’re tied to identity, authority, culture, and comfort. Changing a model means admitting that something you’ve organized your life, work, or organization around isn’t true. So instead of doing that, we add another layer of effort to make the evidence fit what we believe.

It’s not just that something isn’t true, but how much of your life and resources you’ve invested in upholding the model. This tension rides along the same neural grooves as the sunk cost fallacy.

So we keep operating as if the belief is true. The work accumulates. And somewhere in the background, the exasperation keeps building because part of us already knows something is off.

Alas, we so quickly assume that we’re what’s wrong, broken, or uniquely defective. Because many of us don’t socialize our cognitive dissonances, we don’t know that others struggle with the same dissonance.

You might recognize this pattern from a different angle. In Team Habits, I wrote about broken printers — small, fixable dysfunctions that teams learn to work around instead of addressing. The printer stays broken not because it couldn’t be fixed, but because fixing it would require admitting that working around it has become the norm.

Broken printers are often epicycles in disguise. The workaround persists because somewhere underneath it is a belief that makes addressing the root cause feel unnecessary or not worth the disruption. The epicycle turns a fixable problem into a permanent feature of how the team works.

The Personal Epicycle: When Easy Feels Like Cheating

I have a client whose work, at its best, is effortless. The ideas flow, the execution feels natural, and when she’s in it, she doesn’t have to force anything.

Sounds great, right?

Wrong.

To her, the effortlessness doesn’t feel like mastery. It feels like evidence she’s not earning it. So she builds difficulty back in. Not because it helps — it doesn’t — but because it makes the work feel legitimate.

Underneath all of it is a belief she never named out loud before we started working together: if it’s easy for me, I must be doing something wrong.

Easy feels like cheating. She’s not a cheater, so she makes the work harder.

A major part of our work together has been rebuilding her business and life to remove the unnecessary shoulds and difficulty.

Initially, she got it and agreed. For a while, she’d find flow, ease, joy, and momentum in her work.

But then she’d start thrashing.

She’d feel the urge to buy a course on a topic she’s already excellent at. She’d resist the warm-ups that get her into her best work. She’d find ways to make the work harder and more structured to feel real.

All those behaviors were epicycles riding on the belief she had to work to change.

She’s doing much better now. Instead of buying courses, she travels to meet colleagues or just to enjoy herself. The warm-ups are still a work in progress.

Maybe you don’t buy courses you don’t need. But maybe you over-prepare for conversations you could have off the cuff. Maybe you run your best ideas through three more rounds of revision after they’re already done. Maybe you’ve built an elaborate process around work that you could do in half the time and you’d feel vaguely guilty if you did.

There’s a good chance you have a version of this belief. Don’t believe me? Pick something you’re stuck on and ask what’s the simplest possible way you could move it forward. Notice if you reject the simple option.

The Organizational Epicycle: Return-to-Office

The belief behind most return-to-office mandates is simple: “If I can see you working, I know you’re working.” That’s the model industrial management was built on. Before the pandemic proved it, it was already wrong for a lot of knowledge work.

Instead of updating the belief, most organizations added epicycles: badge tracking systems, hybrid attendance policies, elaborate “culture” justifications, productivity theater, and an endless cycle of leadership debates about what the data really means.

Some organizations have real reasons for wanting people together. Great reasons for bringing people together are mentorship, onboarding, and collaboration that genuinely don’t happen remotely. But you can usually tell the difference between these legitimate cases and the epicycle cases.

The people inside that system aren’t just doing unnecessary work at work. They have to arrange their personal lives around the paradigm. They have to invest time, energy, attention, and money in commutes, childcare, schools, caretakers, therapists, recovery trips, and food to sit at a desk and put headphones on to talk to people somewhere else.

During the Team Habits tour, I said it many times: expect exasperation and rebellion when you make workers drive two hours a day for half their day to be on virtual calls and another third in digital comm tools like Slack and email. All because you believe that people are universally more productive in the office and that any hybrid work culture is inferior to a co-located culture.

In the teams I’ve advised, people are actually fine with commuting and traveling when it’s clear from the work itself that they need to be together. Extroverted teams or members needing to be somewhere other than home also choose to commute and be co-located.

A reductive analysis is that it’s the same amount of work whether people accept the co-located paradigm or not. However, this misses the extra cost of cognitive dissonance, an unspoken agreement to avoid the topic, and the whole-system fatigue that shows up at work and actually makes the organization less effective.

The Cultural Epicycle: Urgency as a Value

The omnipresence of smartphones and wearables has covertly made urgency a cultural value. If someone or something doesn’t receive a fast response, it’s deemed less important.

This one cuts across our personal lives and our work.

Some urgency is real and obvious. The stakes set the pace for an ER, firefighters and soldiers, a trading desk during a selloff, a newsroom on election night, or a startup with eight weeks of runway. The tell for real urgency is that it comes from outside: a customer with a reasonable need, a deadline with teeth, or an emergency whose consequences exist whether or not anyone’s paying attention.

Artificial urgency comes from inside. It’s generated to make ourselves or the work feel important or to keep slack out of the system.

In our personal lives, friends and family expect near-immediate responses to texts and emails. People expect quick engagement from their friends and family on their social media posts. We under-plan because we can always get information instantly, even if it means asking our partner what to add to the grocery list while we’re at the store.

I’ve lost would-be friends because I don’t operate on this urgency. My best friends understand that I may not respond to a non-urgent text or Marco Polo for days or a week. But they also know that when I’m with them, they get 100% of my attention because I’m not checking my phone or watch to see who else I need to be interacting with.

Many workplaces run on the belief that if something is important, it must be urgent. Instead of questioning this belief, they create urgency as a signal of importance. They create fire drills, last-minute pushes, and constant escalation that treats everything like a crisis.

The urgency is the validation. It’s how the system proves to itself that something matters. Once you see that, the fire drills start to look less like poor planning that occasionally demands heroics and more like a lever managers use to force focus and motivation — Dunkirk Spirit turned into a permanent operating mode instead of the rare event it’s supposed to be.

The cost isn’t just lost time. It’s the chronic low-grade stress of living in manufactured crisis that accumulates without a clear source because the source isn’t the work. It’s the epicycle the work is being run through.

This Isn’t Just You or Your Organization

Thomas Kuhn showed that even scientists, trained to follow evidence wherever it leads, rarely abandon a failing theory upon encountering contradicting data. They spend years explaining away anomalies, adding exceptions, and defending the model, waiting for someone else to blink first.

Those years of defending a failing model weren’t just intellectually wasteful. They were years of real people doing real work that didn’t need to exist.

If that’s how scientists behave, expect it to be more entrenched in our organizations and lives, where the stakes feel more personal and the social costs of changing the model are higher.

Donella Meadows described leverage points: places in a system where a small shift produces outsized change. Most interventions happen at the surface level, with new rules, processes, or structures. That’s exactly where epicycles live.

Meadows argued that the highest-leverage point is the paradigm itself. Change the underlying beliefs and everything built to compensate becomes unnecessary.

Spotting Your Own Epicycles

The most useful question for spotting epicycles is “What work only exists because we’re protecting an assumption?”

Look for an opaque malaise, flashpoints of exasperation, and dulled eyes. Look for people who have trained themselves not to see because seeing is more confusing and painful than being blind.

Look for meetings that exist because “that’s how we make decisions here.” Look for approval layers that don’t catch anything, reports no one reads, and processes that serve other processes that don’t seem to drive outcomes or align with how people want to be.

In every sector I’ve advised in and every context I’ve seen, people come alive when there’s a compelling problem or puzzle to solve and they feel like they can actually do so. When given the chance and resources to tackle a meaningful problem or puzzle, people do so.

When tasked with or living in what amounts to maintaining an epicycle they can’t change, people check out or do the minimum they have to. Seeing this as a character flaw when it’s a coping strategy incorrectly makes individuals the problem, when the model has been the problem all along.

Changing the Model … and Then Changing It Again

The breakthrough in astronomy didn’t come from better epicycles. Copernicus didn’t build a smarter version of the old model. He moved the center and that eliminated some epicycles.

But not all of them. There was still a second assumption hiding underneath the first.

It took Kepler replacing circles with ellipses to finally let the entire compensating structure go. Two wrong assumptions. Two paradigm shifts. Only then did the system simplify.

I think about that whenever someone says they’ve already tried to change things and it didn’t work. Usually, they did change something real but didn’t find the second assumption. Meaningful change in complex lives and organizations rarely happens in one move.

Most of us are carrying more work and suffering than necessary because we maintain unnecessary circles.

To close the loop I opened at the beginning, that weight you may be feeling is probably not about you. You’re feeling the weight of a belief or model that costs more to maintain than it’s worth.

Instead of adding yet another epicycle or making yourself blind again, the courageous choice is to update the belief or model so that it doesn’t need an epicycle. Especially when you’re the one holding onto the model and expecting others to do so, too.

The three Rs for mid-year also represent a sort of “hierarchy” — or at least a three-step process — for evaluating objectives and projects at this halfway point of the year.

Step 1: Review

Much the same way we benefit from a quarterly review at the end of Q1, a similar review at the end of Q2 can serve us, too. Added benefit: we’ve got another quarter of work under our belts, so we have more data with which to make changes or adjustments to our plans and projects to set ourselves up for a successful back half of the year.

Step 2: Refocus

Once the review step is complete, we have a better understanding of which projects we’ll keep, which we’ll adjust, and which we’ll jettison altogether, based on our current objectives, team or individual capacity, capabilities, readiness, and the like. We’ll enter the second half of the year with a tighter focus on those projects we believe will best move the needle on our objectives, and that we have the best chance to complete with the time and resources we have available.

Step 3: Recommit

This last step is one that is often overlooked, but is as important as the other two. It’s particularly true in team settings, but is also important for our individual projects as well. Here’s where we recommit to the projects we’ve chosen to move forward, and where we energetically let go of those we know we will not get to. For leaders, this is an example of making the obvious explicit: acknowledging what we did and didn’t accomplish in the first half of the year, and making sure everyone is clear on the new priorities and projects we’re moving forward. For individuals, recommitting to our project load is a way to avoid ghost projects that clog our energetic pathways and planning systems.

These three steps are a useful structure for addressing the age-old challenge: if you’re planning effectively, you’ll always be changing your plans.

~Steve

Other Resources for Your Own 3Rs

Review

Refocus

Recommit

Join Us for Our July Events

Mark your calendars for our July events, open to our paid subscribers:

• Leadership Strategy Session (LSS): Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
  July’s Focus: The Mid-Year Inventory Your Annual Plan Needs
  The annual plan you built in January was based on what you knew then. Six months in, some of that picture has held. Some of it hasn’t. July is a good moment to look at what’s actually on your team’s plate against what the annual plan says should be there, and make some deliberate decisions before September makes them for you.

• Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Wednesday, July 15, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
  July’s Focus: The Mid-Year Gut Check Your Projects Need

  At the start of the year you made commitments. Some are moving. Some have quietly become something else along the way. July is the window to look at what you’re actually carrying and decide, deliberately, what comes with you into the back half. Because in September, with the pace back and the pressure on, those decisions will get a lot harder.

July Momentum Planners

The Momentum Planners were built to keep your most important work front and center. Download the free version of our July planners to help you determine what projects you want to accomplish in the new year.

Paid subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇 If you don’t see them, please make sure you’re logged in to your paid account.

If you don’t have a paid subscription yet, now’s a great time to upgrade.

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🌟 Enjoy a special preview of this month’s call replay! We’re sharing a clip from our opening conversation on why high energy and real capacity aren’t the same thing, and what happens when you mistake one for the other. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, consider upgrading to access the full recording and be part of upcoming sessions.

This month we explored a distinction that’s easy to miss: energy and capacity aren’t the same thing. High energy doesn’t automatically mean higher capacity. You still have to account for the limitations of time and attention. When you hit an energetic peak, the instinct may be to reach for more but the five-project rule still applies.

Summer has a way of loading your plate with projects that never make it onto your official list. The seasonal logistics, the life shifts, the things you’re holding for other people. When you don’t count those, you can end up holding more than five projects without realizing it, and something you genuinely care about might get bumped to the bottom of the list until it falls off entirely. That’s not a motivation problem or a discipline problem. It’s a math problem.

“Not now” doesn’t mean “never.” Pausing something you care about, intentionally and honestly, is how you protect both the project and your capacity to do it well.

This month’s Q&A also covered:

• Expanding into a new market when your existing momentum doesn’t transfer: Why your yaysayers are a more reliable signal than the stories you’re telling yourself

• Checking your goals before deciding you’re off track: Why going back to look is almost always more useful than the spiral of deciding you’ve failed

• Getting a stalled project moving when fear has made it feel too big to start: Why finding the smallest experiment is often the only move you need

• Is it a problem, a puzzle, or a situation?: Why naming what you’re actually dealing with changes everything about how you respond when your capacity keeps shifting and demands are hard to predict.

This summer, the practice isn’t staying on track. It’s getting good at finding your way back.

If you want to be part of these conversations live, consider joining us as a paid subscriber.

Our next Monthly Momentum Call will be on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Premium subscribers can watch the full recording and find the session highlights below, along with all the resources mentioned throughout the call. 👇🏽

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Summer is full. If you’re not navigating vacation schedules and shifting team availability, you’re probably managing the particular busyness that July brings on its own. The last thing that feels pressing right now is pausing to take stock.

Which is exactly why July is a good time to do it.

Underneath the busyness of these summer months, most of us are still carrying the full weight of everything the first half of the year left on our plates: projects that shifted status without anyone deciding they should, work that’s done but never got properly closed out, goals that quietly changed shape somewhere along the way. None of it feels urgent right now because summer has a way of softening the edges of things.

September won’t.

When the pace picks back up, that weight doesn’t disappear. It just becomes a lot harder to sort through with intention when everything else is pressing at once. The leaders and individuals who arrive at the back half of the year with a clear picture of what’s actually in play, and what they’ve deliberately set down, are in a very different position than those who suddenly have to figure it out under pressure.

This month, both our Leadership Strategy Session (July 1) and Monthly Momentum Call (July 15) explore what it looks like to use this stretch of summer to take that look, while there's still room to make deliberate choices about what deserves your focus in the back half.

We hope to see you in July! (Details below 👇🏽)

Leadership Strategy Session

For leaders navigating team dynamics, organizational priorities, and the challenge of maintaining sustainable momentum while delivering results.

Wednesday, July 1, 2026 at 11am PDT

July's Focus: The Mid-Year Inventory Your Annual Plan Needs

The annual plan you built in January was based on what you knew then. Six months in, some of that picture has held. Some of it hasn’t. And right now, while the pace is slower and the team is in and out, it can be hard to notice what’s shifted.

But it’s there. Projects that have stalled without anyone naming them stuck. Work that’s functionally done but never properly closed out, still generating quiet friction. Initiatives that were deprioritized months ago but are still showing up in status updates because nobody’s said out loud that they’re off the table.

July is a good moment to look at what’s actually on your team’s plate against what the annual plan says should be there, and make some deliberate decisions before September makes them for you.

We’ll explore themes like:

• Telling the difference between what’s truly active and what’s just still on the list

• Naming stuck or dead work out loud so the team isn’t carrying it in silence

• Closing out work that’s done but still creating friction

• Deciding what belongs in the back half of the annual plan and what doesn’t

Bring questions about: Where your team’s annual plan has drifted from reality, projects that are stuck or dropped but haven’t been named that way, how to have the conversation about what’s no longer in play, and what a deliberate mid-year realignment looks like in practice.

Monthly Momentum Call

For anyone looking to focus on what matters most, clarify goals, and make meaningful progress on what’s important to you.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026 at 11am PDT

July's Focus: The Mid-Year Gut Check Your Projects Need

At the start of the year you made commitments. Some are moving. Some have quietly become something else along the way.

There’s probably a project that had real energy in January that’s been bumped so many times it no longer has a real place on your calendar. Something you finished months ago that you never properly wrapped up, so loose ends from it keep resurfacing at inconvenient times. A goal that looked different once you actually got into it, and you’ve been carrying the low-level guilt of not pushing it forward without ever officially deciding to change course.

Right now, none of it feels particularly loud. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. July is the window to look at what you’re actually carrying and decide, deliberately, what comes with you into the back half. Because in September, with the pace back and the pressure on, those decisions will get a lot harder.

We’ll explore:

• Taking stock of where your projects actually stand, not where January assumed they would

• Telling the difference between a project that’s stuck and one that’s run its course

• What it takes to set something down, release it, or properly close it out

• Making deliberate choices about the back half before September makes them for you

Bring questions about: Figuring out where your projects actually stand right now, what to do with something that’s been stalled for months, how to let go of a goal that’s no longer serving you, and what it looks like to make deliberate choices about the back half before the pressure of September makes them for you.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing.

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, we encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us in July for one or both of these calls.

Our Monthly Momentum Calls are designed to help you focus on what matters most, offering a supportive space to clarify goals, overcome challenges, and make meaningful progress — whether you’re pursuing a creative project, growing your business, or balancing life responsibilities.

Each 60-minute session blends teaching, hot- support-seat coaching, and interactive Q&A, providing real-time support and actionable insights to help you move forward with clarity and purpose.

July’s Focus: The Mid-Year Gut Check Your Projects Need

At the start of the year you made commitments. Some are moving. Some have quietly become something else along the way.

There’s probably a project that had real energy in January that’s been bumped so many times it no longer has a real place on your calendar. Something you finished months ago that you never properly wrapped up, so loose ends from it keep resurfacing at inconvenient times. A goal that looked different once you actually got into it, and you’ve been carrying the low-level guilt of not pushing it forward without ever officially deciding to change course.

Right now, none of it feels particularly loud. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. July is the window to look at what you’re actually carrying and decide, deliberately, what comes with you into the back half. Because in September, with the pace back and the pressure on, those decisions will get a lot harder.

We’ll explore:

• Taking stock of where your projects actually stand, not where January assumed they would

• Telling the difference between a project that’s stuck and one that’s run its course

• What it takes to set something down, release it, or properly close it out

• Making deliberate choices about the back half before September makes them for you

Bring questions about: Figuring out where your projects actually stand right now, what to do with something that’s been stalled for months, how to let go of a goal that’s no longer serving you, and what it looks like to make deliberate choices about the back half before the pressure of September makes them for you.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us Wednesday, July 15, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Paid subscribers, here’s what you need to know to join the call:

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To be a leader means managing constant complexity. Shifting priorities, team dynamics, capacity challenges, and the pressure to execute while everything keeps changing.

Our Leadership Strategy Sessions are supportive, no-fluff monthly virtual meetings for leaders navigating the real challenges of modern team life.

Each session blends practical guidance, coaching, and peer Q&A. We tackle what’s most timely and relevant, from clarifying team roles and managing capacity to leading through change and building trust.

You don’t need to prep. You just need to show up as you are, with whatever’s on your plate. These sessions are designed to meet you where you are.

July’s Focus: The Mid-Year Inventory Your Annual Plan Needs

The annual plan you built in January was based on what you knew then. Six months in, some of that picture has held. Some of it hasn’t. And right now, while the pace is slower and the team is in and out, it can be hard to notice what’s shifted.

But it’s there. Projects that have stalled without anyone naming them stuck. Work that’s functionally done but never properly closed out, still generating quiet friction. Initiatives that were deprioritized months ago but are still showing up in status updates because nobody’s said out loud that they’re off the table.

July is a good moment to look at what’s actually on your team’s plate against what the annual plan says should be there, and make some deliberate decisions before September makes them for you.

We’ll explore themes like:

• Telling the difference between what’s truly active and what’s just still on the list

• Naming stuck or dead work out loud so the team isn’t carrying it in silence

• Closing out work that’s done but still creating friction

• Deciding what belongs in the back half of the annual plan and what doesn’t

Bring questions about: Where your team’s annual plan has drifted from reality, projects that are stuck or dropped but haven’t been named that way, how to have the conversation about what’s no longer in play, and what a deliberate mid-year realignment looks like in practice.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Paid subscribers, here’s what you need to know to join the call:

Read more

Last month we focused on getting ahead of the summer shift. Now we’re in it.

The leadership work of this season comes down to one thing: expectations. What kind of season is your team actually in? What are you maintaining, and what does that work look like when it’s done well? What behaviors and outcomes are you solving for between now and September? Get those answers out of your head and in front of your team before July gets slippery, and resist the pull to force this season into something it isn’t shaping up to be.

That thread ran through the entire session, from the teaching to every Q&A conversation.

This month’s Q&A also covered:

• Whether to plan around quarters or semesters, and how to choose the frame that matches your actual energy cycles without creating extra translation work

• Reframing a season of lower business output as intentional investment in relationships and network-building, rather than evidence of falling behind

• Why being intentional and being transactional are not in conflict, and how confusing the two gets in the way of showing up authentically in relationships

• Navigating the tension between honest expert advice and a client’s right to choose their own path

• Updating a business agreement that has drifted from its original terms

Our next Leadership Strategy Session will be on Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Premium subscribers can watch the full opening teaching and access all related resources shared during the call. 👇🏽

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Our May tips talked about choosing the cadence that works best for you. Maghan shared how she’s experimenting with semesters instead of quarters, because that feels more energetically aligned to where she is, and where her transition points are between her yearly “seasons.”

I realized (again) in my haiku practice, after each piece explored themes of change, that I’m deep in a transition of my own. I touched on this in April’s tips, where I was feeling the restless energy of spring and that sense of a change on the horizon. But in the past couple months, that feeling of transition has intensified.

As Mom’s dementia journey has created changes for her, my role as caregiver has changed, too. From the last several years where I was the primary “doer” of Mom’s care, to this transitional phase where I need help helping her, to (very soon now) a time when Mom’s care will be entirely in the hands of professionals.

All of which has me thinking about transitions and changes and the labor required of them, and how that relates to seasons of building/growing and maintaining/resting we’ll be touching on in June. I’m reminded that transitions, whether personal or organizational, often require elements of both: of maintaining what’s critical while simultaneously working on the core project(s) that represent the change.

Sometimes that change project requires intensity and growth energy, a strong plan and concerted effort from yourself or your team. Other times change isn’t so much about doing the work and moving the project along, as much as it’s an emotional recalibration, and/or figuring out what the next season and its core projects will be and how to make space for them.

If you find yourself in a transition period of your own, whether personal or professional, here are some things I’m reminding myself of that might help you, too:

• Any significant transition or change is a project, and often more than one. Whether that change is a job search or a promotion, a family situation, a work crisis, a move, or something else, the first thing to do is to make space for it, both planning/preparation and execution phases.

• Every change has an emotional component everyone involved has to navigate, as roles and identities change alongside the other logical and concrete tasks and structures. (Hence the “often more than one project” I mentioned above.)

• Transitions often require letting go of other projects to make room for them. Our old friends can help us here: project cagematches to decide what stays and what goes, and leaving breadcrumbs to let us get back to the ones we’ve postponed.

• Even our change plans likely will need to change. Transitions are fluid, and we can’t anticipate nor plan for every eventuality. Building time into our change projects to account for those adjustments is prudent planning.

No matter the change you’re experiencing, give yourself some space and grace as you’re navigating those new waters.

~Steve

Other Resources for Navigating Your Own Transitions

Join Us for Our June Events

Mark your calendars for our June events, open to our paid subscribers:

• Leadership Strategy Session (LSS): Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
  June’s Focus: Leading Through a Tending Season
  The leaders who come out of summer with their teams intact are the ones who took this season seriously on its own terms. That means knowing which parts of your team are genuinely in tending mode and which have more to give, protecting the work worth protecting, and leading in a way that sets up a strong return rather than just surviving the months in between.

• Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
  June’s Focus: Leading Yourself Through the Season You’re In

  A growth season without enough structure scatters. A slower season without enough intention drifts. The work in June is learning to lead yourself skillfully, making real progress on what the season can actually hold, and resisting the pull to measure that progress against a season you’re not in. Part of that is seeing the season clearly, including the projects that summer quietly adds to your plate that never make it onto your official list.

• New This Summer! Hands-On “Playshops” to Put Our Best Tools to Good Use
  Over the coming months, we’re planning a series of pop-up workshops designed to get you actually using the tools, worksheets, and frameworks we’ve built over the years. Less theory, more doing. Our first one will focus on the OpTempo Wheel, a chance to work through your own energy map with guidance and community.
  These workshops will be open to all paid subscribers, and we’ll be sharing details soon. If you’d like to join us and put these tools to work, consider upgrading your subscription.

June Momentum Planners

The Momentum Planners were built to keep your most important work front and center. Download the free version of our June planners to help you determine what projects you want to accomplish in the new year.

Paid subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇 If you don’t see them, please make sure you’re logged in to your paid account.

If you don’t have a paid subscription yet, now’s a great time to upgrade.

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Most people treat email like it’s the easy part of the day. The filler between blocks of real work. The thing you’ll knock out when you have 10 minutes.

That framing is costing you more than you think.

The Complaint That Started This

A coordinator I was working with mentioned that their executive director had to remind a senior leader — repeatedly — to read their emails. The leader’s response was that they were overwhelmed.

That’s a familiar kind of stuck. You’re behind, so you avoid. You avoid, so you fall further behind. And somewhere in there, you’ve convinced yourself that email isn’t real work — it’s the tax you pay to get back to the real work.

Email Isn’t Consumption. It’s Not Production. It’s Something Harder.

When you scroll social media or read an article, you’re consuming. Low obligation. No consequence. You don’t have to decide anything, respond to anyone, or track a single open loop.

When you write a proposal or work through a strategy doc, you’re producing. High effort, but coherent — one context, one goal.

Email is neither of those things.

Every message you open starts a real sequence: figure out who this person is and what they actually need, decide what the right response is, and write it in a way that moves things forward. Then do it again — different person, different project, different stakes.

That’s not light admin. That’s repeated context switching, which is one of the most cognitively expensive things a brain does.

Five Emails Is Not Necessarily Five Quick Tasks

Here’s the math people get wrong: they count typing time. They don’t count the thinking time before every response, the decision ambiguity when the right answer isn’t obvious, or the relational weight that comes with communication that actually matters.

A two-minute read can easily turn into a 20-minute response — not because you’re slow, but because figuring out what to say, to whom, and at what level of detail is real cognitive work. Do three to five of those in a sitting and you’re looking at 60–100 minutes of actual labor.

The reason inboxes pile up isn’t laziness. It’s that email is harder than it looks, and most people haven’t budgeted for what it actually takes.

You’ve Been Context-Switching Since You Woke Up

Here’s what makes it worse. Most people aren’t doing email in contained blocks — they’re checking it constantly throughout the day. Research consistently puts the average at somewhere between every 6 and 11 minutes.

That matters because of what Gloria Mark’s research found: after an interruption, it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully return to the task you were on. You don’t just lose the time you spent on the email. You lose the re-entry time too.

Do that math across a full workday and it becomes clear that most people aren’t experiencing occasional interruptions. They’re in a near-continuous state of context switching from the moment they open their inbox in the morning.

The mild brain fog that sets in by early afternoon, the feeling that you worked hard but can’t point to much — that’s not a focus problem. That’s the accumulated cost of dozens of incomplete cognitive resets.

This is also why keeping your to-do list in your inbox makes things worse, not better; you’re not just checking email, you’re re-entering a reactive state every time you open it.

Why Admin Blocks Are 30–60 Minutes

I’ve written before about admin blocks in time blocking — those dedicated chunks for processing email, returning messages, and handling the coordination work that keeps everything moving. My standard recommendation is 30–60 minutes.

Part of that has always been about affinity: most people have low enthusiasm for admin work, and after about an hour they get itchy to do something more engaging. That’s real.

But there’s a second reason I haven’t named until now. Fragmented cognitive load burns out faster than focused cognitive load. Decision fatigue accumulates with every context switch. After 30–60 minutes of rapid-fire context switching, response quality drops and avoidance goes up, even if you feel like you could keep going.

The admin block has a ceiling not just because admin is unpleasant, but because the cognitive cost stacks fast and quietly.

Once you’re inside your admin block, the S.T.A.R. method is the fastest way to work through what’s there — it’s built specifically for this kind of high-volume, fragmented processing.

Email Is Hard

Email doesn’t just cost you the time you spend on it.

It costs you the clarity you need for everything else.

Use the tips above to manage the hard better.

🌟 Enjoy a special preview of this month's call replay! We're sharing a clip from our opening conversation on mapping your personal energy cycles and why the calendar you're using might be working against you. If you're not already a paid subscriber, consider upgrading to access the full recording and be part of upcoming sessions.

Thank you to everyone who joined our May Monthly Momentum Call!

There is a moment in May where you start to feel it. The rhythm that carried you through spring begins to shift. Energy changes, the summer stretches out ahead, and the months to come look and feel different from the ones behind you. (And for those of you in the southern hemisphere, the same is true as you move into winter and your own seasonal shift takes hold.)

This month, we explored what it actually looks like to plan around your own seasonal energy rather than defaulting to a calendar that wasn’t designed with you in mind. Our OpTempo Wheel worksheet was built for teams, but it turns out it’s just as useful for mapping the natural rhythms of your own year. Plotting your energy across 12 months makes the patterns hard to ignore, and might have you asking the same question it raised for us:

What if your planning year started when your energy peaks, not when the calendar says to?

Here are some of the other topics we explored this month:

• Timing a creative relaunch around life transitions: How to think about when to restart a project you’ve been sitting on, when major life transitions are already asking a lot of you

• Re-engaging event registrants: What to put in pre-event emails to remind people who signed up for free why showing up is worth their time

• Project clarity when working with a consultant: What to do when outside advice keeps shifting your plan, and how to figure out who’s actually driving the project

• Building a local audience through connections rather than content: Why starting with super connectors may matter more than scaling a content calendar before your message is dialed in

• Protecting creative work from being co-opted: How to think about trust when sharing ideas publicly, and what the real risk of obscurity costs compared to the fear of someone running with your work

A thread that ran through nearly every conversation this month: the importance of getting clear on what you’re actually trying to accomplish before you dive headlong into a project. Whether the question was about relaunching a podcast, re-engaging event attendees, or building a local audience, the move that mattered most was calibrating your goals to your actual capacity first, and then building your plan from there.

Our next Monthly Momentum Call will be on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Premium subscribers can watch the full recording and find the session highlights below, along with all the resources mentioned throughout the call. 👇🏽

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May was about looking honestly at what you, your projects, and your team could actually hold between now and September. Reading your OpTempo (operational tempo) before the season arrived rather than discovering it when something dropped.

June is where that work has to translate into how you actually work.

Not everyone arrives in June in the same season. Some teams have real energy right now and meaningful work that matches it. Some individuals are in a genuine growth stretch. Others are in something slower, a season that calls for maintaining rather than building, tending what’s already in motion rather than launching what’s new. Both are legitimate. Neither runs itself.

The harder truth is that the seasons requiring more deliberate leadership (for your team or yourself) aren’t always the ones with the most energy. Knowing what season you’re in is only half the work. Leading yourself or your team well during a slower season without defaulting to building-season expectations or letting the slower pace become drift, is where the real skill lives.

This month, both our Leadership Strategy Session and Monthly Momentum Call explore what it looks like to lead well in the season you’re actually in.

We hope to see you in June! (Details below 👇🏽)

Leadership Strategy Session

For leaders navigating team dynamics, organizational priorities, and the challenge of maintaining sustainable momentum while delivering results.

Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at 11am PDT

June's Focus: Leading Through a Tending Season

For most teams, June marks the beginning of a slower stretch. Not a stopping point, but a season where the work shifts: maintaining progress, holding focus through looser structures, and keeping what matters moving without the natural momentum that higher-energy seasons provide. That’s a different kind of leadership challenge, and one that’s easy to underestimate.

When the pace slows and structures loosen, teams drift unless someone is paying attention. Work that felt clear in April gets muddier. People fill the space with whatever surfaces rather than what matters. And leaders who keep applying building-season pressure to a team that isn’t resourced for it create a different kind of problem: one that shows up in September, not June.

The leaders who come out of summer with their teams intact are the ones who took this season seriously on its own terms. That means knowing which parts of your team are genuinely in tending mode and which have more to give, protecting the work worth protecting, and leading in a way that sets up a strong return rather than just surviving the months in between.

We’ll explore themes like:

• What deliberate leadership looks like when energy is lower and structure is looser

• How to hold your team’s focus without imposing pressure the season can’t support

• Distinguishing between what needs to be maintained and what can genuinely flex

• What you’re building toward, and how to lead now in a way that sets up what comes next

Bring questions about: Keeping the right work moving when energy is uneven, how to hold team focus without over-managing, what to protect and what to genuinely let flex, and how to lead through summer in a way that sets your team up well for the return.

Monthly Momentum Call

For anyone looking to focus on what matters most, clarify goals, and make meaningful progress on what’s important to you.

Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 11am PDT

June's Focus: Leading Yourself Through the Season You're In

You came into May with a question: what does this season actually have room for? Maybe you have some version of an answer now. Maybe it confirmed that this is a real growth stretch for you and your projects. Maybe it revealed something slower, a season better suited to sustaining than expanding.

What neither answer comes with is an instruction manual for how to work well within it.

A growth season without enough structure scatters. A slower season without enough intention drifts. The work in June is learning to lead yourself skillfully, making real progress on what the season can actually hold, and resisting the pull to measure that progress against a season you’re not in. Part of that is seeing the season clearly, including the projects that summer quietly adds to your plate that never make it onto your official list.

We’ll explore:

• What working well actually looks like in your season, whether that’s growth or something slower

• Which projects deserve your energy now and which ones are better served by being set down until conditions change

• How to stay genuinely connected to your work without demanding the wrong things from yourself

• What this stretch is good for, and how to use it rather than just get through it

Join us for our next Monthly Momentum Call on June 17, 2026 at 11am PDT

Bring questions about: Making the most of the season you’re actually in, choosing where to focus when your energy and your ambitions don’t quite match, navigating the projects summer added to your plate that weren’t part of the plan, what sustainable progress looks like right now, and how to set yourself up well for the second half without grinding through summer to get there.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing.

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, we encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us in June for one or both of these calls.

Our Monthly Momentum Calls are designed to help you focus on what matters most, offering a supportive space to clarify goals, overcome challenges, and make meaningful progress — whether you’re pursuing a creative project, growing your business, or balancing life responsibilities.

Each 60-minute session blends teaching, hot- support-seat coaching, and interactive Q&A, providing real-time support and actionable insights to help you move forward with clarity and purpose.

June’s Focus: Leading Yourself Through the Season You’re In

You came into May with a question: what does this season actually have room for? Maybe you have some version of an answer now. Maybe it confirmed that this is a real growth stretch for you and your projects. Maybe it revealed something slower, a season better suited to sustaining than expanding.

What neither answer comes with is an instruction manual for how to work well within it.

A growth season without enough structure scatters. A slower season without enough intention drifts. The work in June is learning to lead yourself skillfully, making real progress on what the season can actually hold, and resisting the pull to measure that progress against a season you’re not in. Part of that is seeing the season clearly, including the projects that summer quietly adds to your plate that never make it onto your official list.

We’ll explore:

• What working well actually looks like in your season, whether that’s growth or something slower

• Which projects deserve your energy now and which ones are better served by being set down until conditions change

• How to stay genuinely connected to your work without demanding the wrong things from yourself

• What this stretch is good for, and how to use it rather than just get through it

Join us for our next Monthly Momentum Call on June 17, 2026 at 11am PDT

Bring questions about: Making the most of the season you’re actually in, choosing where to focus when your energy and your ambitions don’t quite match, navigating the projects summer added to your plate that weren’t part of the plan, what sustainable progress looks like right now, and how to set yourself up well for the second half without grinding through summer to get there.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us Wednesday, June 17, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Paid subscribers, here’s what you need to know to join the call:

Read more

To be a leader means managing constant complexity. Shifting priorities, team dynamics, capacity challenges, and the pressure to execute while everything keeps changing.

Our Leadership Strategy Sessions are supportive, no-fluff monthly virtual meetings for leaders navigating the real challenges of modern team life.

Each session blends practical guidance, coaching, and peer Q&A. We tackle what’s most timely and relevant, from clarifying team roles and managing capacity to leading through change and building trust.

You don’t need to prep. You just need to show up as you are, with whatever’s on your plate. These sessions are designed to meet you where you are.

June’s Focus: Leading Through a Tending Season

For most teams, June marks the beginning of a slower stretch. Not a stopping point, but a season where the work shifts: maintaining progress, holding focus through looser structures, and keeping what matters moving without the natural momentum that higher-energy seasons provide. That’s a different kind of leadership challenge, and one that’s easy to underestimate.

When the pace slows and structures loosen, teams drift unless someone is paying attention. Work that felt clear in April gets muddier. People fill the space with whatever surfaces rather than what matters. And leaders who keep applying building-season pressure to a team that isn’t resourced for it create a different kind of problem: one that shows up in September, not June.

The leaders who come out of summer with their teams intact are the ones who took this season seriously on its own terms. That means knowing which parts of your team are genuinely in tending mode and which have more to give, protecting the work worth protecting, and leading in a way that sets up a strong return rather than just surviving the months in between.

We’ll explore themes like:

• What deliberate leadership looks like when energy is lower and structure is looser

• How to hold your team’s focus without imposing pressure the season can’t support

• Distinguishing between what needs to be maintained and what can genuinely flex

• What you’re building toward, and how to lead now in a way that sets up what comes next

June rewards the leaders who take a tending season seriously. That’s what we’re working on.

Bring questions about: Keeping the right work moving when energy is uneven, how to hold team focus without over-managing, what to protect and what to genuinely let flex, and how to lead through summer in a way that sets your team up well for the return.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Paid subscribers, here’s what you need to know to join the call:

Read more

Your team’s capacity is already shifting. The question is whether your expectations are shifting with it.

The back half of May is full of personal projects that don’t get counted as projects. School schedules changing, summer plans getting made, family logistics kicking in. All of that sits on top of the work. And when leaders keep expecting a level of output that no longer matches what their team actually has to give, that mismatch is where the anxiety lives.

This month we focused on getting ahead of that gap: getting honest about what your team’s energy actually looks like between now and September, communicating your expectations clearly, and not waiting until something drops to have the conversation.

This month’s Q&A also covered:

• Assessing your team’s summer operational tempo and communicating expectations before the mismatch creates anxiety

• Bridging the gap between monthly goals and daily focus blocks when priorities compete for your attention within a single work session

• Leading during a difficult team transition, with a reminder that tension is not necessarily conflict and discomfort is not necessarily harm

• Holding the line on team communication patterns when people default to triangulating through you instead of talking directly to each other

• Sequencing fractional roles in a resource-constrained organization when no single hire can cover everything you need

• Getting ahead of the gap between where you’re focused and where your team is, and how to share strategic intent in small enough doses that it lands as direction rather than distraction

• Developing a team member who is new to entrepreneurial goal-setting culture, and how to give people something concrete to solve for

From focus blocks to fractional hiring to leading through team tension, this session covered a lot of ground. Provide the clarity, align your team, be clear about who’s doing what, and make your expectations known before the slip and slide season gets away from you. If you want to be part of these conversations live, consider joining us as a paid subscriber.

Our next Leadership Strategy Session will be on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Premium subscribers can watch the full opening teaching and access all related resources shared during the call. 👇🏽

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I was walking to the coffeeshop recently and I misread a message written in chalk on the sidewalk:

I saw “Embrace Near Misses” before my brain read “Embrace New Memories.”

As I acknowledged the misread, I realized something: “Embrace Near Misses” is not something most people would say.

But it is something I would think and say.

When It’s Still a Miss

I’ve had a lot of these kinds of near misses in my life, from bullets to wrecks to plane flights to missed proposals.

Some of those near misses were outside of my direct control. In those cases, embracing near misses amounts to being thankful about what didn’t happen and examining what I did that may have made that near miss more likely.

Thinking of my deployment, I couldn’t control if insurgents were preparing to ambush convoys along the routes we were driving; all I could control or influence is timing my convoys road time for when attacks historically were less likely. There were too many occasions where the convoy before or after us got hit. Whether it was smart tactics, dumb luck, or Providence, I knew to embrace the near misses.

Some near misses, like my non-proposal to Angela in Greece during our college European backpacking trip, were under my control. Even though we both knew the time was right and what the answer would be, I let my brain get in the way. I didn’t have a ring. I wasn’t sure I could provide the type of life she was used to. And so on.

My head won; our hearts lost.

Embracing these kinds of near misses amounts to preparing yourself for the next time. In the case of the proposal, I learned to discern when head should follow heart. (This was before I knew of the power of regret — H/T Dan Pink — as a heuristic.)

That exact circumstance hasn’t come up for me again, thankfully, but I saw the same thing in my best friend as he was falling in love with his partner. His head was leading him to a near miss. I was happy to be there to tell him to lean in.

I officiated their wedding in early May 2026. The same impulse is likely why I’ve been the godfather of a lot of books and businesses, as well as a catalyst of romantic relationships.

When It’s a Hit

This kind of near miss happens a lot, too, and likely provides just as much of a learning opportunity as the other version. People focus on the fact that it almost wasn’t a hit rather than that it was a hit. A last-minute success is still a success; a just passed is still a pass.

Our negativity bias has too much weight on these kinds of near misses. For this kind of near miss, the ‘embrace’ should apply to the success, not the ‘near failure.’

I recently facilitated a conversation with a leadership team that was a near miss of this type. In my excitement to guide the next steps and create a bridge for the next phase of the work, I shared something at the end of the meeting that needed more setup and context.

The addition of this undercooked overview nearly drove an otherwise great session off the rails. And, unfortunate for me, I responded to commentary more curtly than I normally would because I realized after the fact that I was also at my cognitive limit.

We all recovered well enough to frame it as an intent rather than a specific assignment right now and the team walked away feeling confident and supported with the planned content and discussion. I followed up with the person I was curt with to apologize and do some repair.

It’d be easy to dwell on the fumble, but that we were able to recover, rally, and realign is what’s worth embracing.

As I shared with the three levels of success in Start Finishing, the rigid binary of success or failure often leads people to either make the stakes of a project too high or unable to accept near misses (that were hits) precisely because we reduce the options to extreme success or failure. I didn’t meet my own high standards of extreme success, but that also doesn’t mean the whole facilitation was a failure.

And for too many people, failure becomes character failure. I wasn’t curt because I’m unwilling to hear feedback or dance with the group; I was curt because my early excitement stretched my and the group’s limits.

The first rule of these kinds of near misses is to embrace the success/hit. Yes, that means a victory lap is still warranted. It took me a minute to get there with the facilitation, but I got there nonetheless when I realized that the recovery was as laudable as the misstep.

Then assess what was under your influence or control that may have compromised the level of success or made failure more likely. When you do this, don’t attribute all the failure modes to your or your team’s efforts, nor all the success factors to luck or providence.

The Message I’m Keeping

“Embrace New Memories” is fine advice.

But I’m keeping and sharing the message I saw rather than the one I read.

Most of us know we should take breaks. Plenty of research has found that breaks boost energy and mood. But many of us also think of breaks as simply stopping working for a while. That’s part of it. But to make the most of these recovery blocks (as Charlie puts it) it helps to think of what you actually intend to do with this time. It’s impossible to do nothing. You’ll do something, but certain somethings can be more rejuvenating than other things.

That’s what I found while researching Big Time, my new book on time management. I did several projects where I had hundreds of people try out strategies for making time feel more expansive and satisfying. One of those involved asking people to pro-actively plan in two breaks during their workdays. I asked people to think ahead of time about what they would do during these short breaks with an eye toward doing things that would add to their energy levels.

Faced with this challenge, people got quite creative. They took walks (even up and down the stairs). They read novels. They meditated. They played with the dogs while working at home. Curiously, most people chose two different break intentions each day (e.g., reading in the morning, walking in the afternoon), thus creating a break “portfolio” that made work a little more interesting. Coupled with some other strategies, this led to people feeling less distracted and less exhausted within a week.

I also challenged people to choose intentional leisure at night. Weekday evenings are a recovery block in their own right. Ideally you reset your energy levels before going back to work the next day. Yet because people are tired after work, they tend not to use this time intentionally, often seeing it disappear into mindless screen time. So I asked people to choose, ahead of time, an intentional leisure activity they could do for 30 minutes during what I like to call their “golden hours” (after work, before bed). Some people called friends, went to an exercise class, played outside with the kids, or read a book. Screen time was OK if it was chosen — for instance, 30 minutes of a favorite show planned into the evening so you could look forward to it.

After a week of this, people were far more likely to agree with the statements “Yesterday, I had enough time for the things I wanted to do” and “Yesterday, I did not waste time on things that weren’t important to me.” People even felt more rested, because it turns out that when you proactively build rejuvenating leisure into your evenings, you don’t have to stay up late to get it. It’s a win all around.

The point of leisure activities isn’t just to boost your energy for work, of course. But I do think that one of the reasons people feel like they don’t have enough time is that we don’t take advantage of the leisure time that is available to us to do what we’d most enjoy. We do whatever is there. Actively choosing how to spend these recovery blocks makes them feel like they happened — and that is definitely a good thing.

~Laura

I mentioned to Steve the other day that I wasn’t really feeling April as a “start” as much as an “end” of a phase — and that it’s been this week, on the cusp of May, that I’ve really felt the shift.

So I’ve been thinking the last several days that I’m going to experiment with shifting from quarters to “semesters,” because May-August feels more in line with my seasonal energy than the April-June/July-September structure does.

For some of us, three semesters per year might feel more right and rooted than four quarters or even the four seasons. Especially because those calendar quarters and natural seasons don’t always align with each other.

That feeling of rightness might also align with patterns from childhood where our school years were structured much the same way. Two “in-school” semesters, Fall and Winter, and then the Summer semester off for holidays, vacations, and so on.

If you’re like me, you might be feeling a stronger pull towards something now than you were a month ago. That might be a pull towards rest, relaxation, and a summer slow, or the warmer temps might be providing a spike in energy, creating momentum rather than slowing it.

Depending where you live, May might also be a time when you really feel the seasonal change and a corresponding energetic shift, just like I am right now. It was a long, cold, and gray winter here in Vienna — the worst in 30 years I’ve been told. April has been the transition into spring, but as it tends to do here, there has been a fair amount of sunny false starts and cold and rainy fall backs.

This last week of the month, though, has been stunning. I finally believe nature is ready for a resurgence, and so am I. I’m feeling a creative energy I haven’t had since, well, this time last year, and if history repeats itself that should last into August.

So if you’re feeling less attuned with the quarterly cadence, here’s your permission to experiment with something else that better aligns with your own energy and rhythms.

Regardless of what cadence you prefer, May is a great time to plan for what you will and won’t do during the summer “semester,” as well as a great time to wrap up any projects you can before changes in energy, focus, schedules, and capacity affect what you and your team are able to accomplish in the next four months.

~Maghan

Resources

Seasons and Cadence

Tempo and Energy

Tools and Tips

Join Us for Our May Events

Mark your calendars for our May events, open to our paid subscribers:

• Leadership Strategy Session (LSS): Wednesday, May 13, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
  May’s Focus: Getting Your Team Ahead of the Seasonal Shift

  April gave your team some clarity about what to carry forward. Now comes the harder part: holding that clarity before everyone’s rhythms start to diverge. The leaders who navigate this well get ahead of it. They read where their team’s energy actually is, clarify who owns what while everyone is still present, and set clear expectations before the wobble sets in.

• Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 11:00 am PDT
  May’s Focus: Make the Seasonal Shift Work for You

  May is where you start to feel it: the rhythm that carried you through spring begins to change. Your energy shifts, your schedule starts filling differently, and the months ahead start to look and feel unlike the ones behind you. Knowing your own seasonal patterns and planning around them before the season fully arrives can make all the difference in how well you navigate the shift.

May Momentum Planners

The Momentum Planners were built to keep your most important work front and center. Download the free version of our May planners to help you determine what projects you want to accomplish in the new year.

Paid subscribers can access the full suite of dated planners below. 👇 If you don’t see them, please make sure you’re logged in to your paid account.

If you don’t have a paid subscription yet, now’s a great time to upgrade.

Read more

May has a way of catching people off guard. Not because anything dramatic happens, but because the calendar says one thing and your energy, your schedule, and your team say something else entirely.

On paper, you’re two months into Q2. In practice, you’re arriving at a genuine seasonal turning point. School years end. Schedules shift. The long, uninterrupted stretches of spring start giving way to something looser and less predictable. For some people that shift brings more energy. For others, it signals a natural slowdown. For most teams, it brings both at once.

This month, our Leadership Strategy Session explores how to get ahead of summer’s uneven rhythms before they get ahead of your team. And our Monthly Momentum Call looks at how to use this transition point to make intentional choices about the season you’re entering.

We hope to see you in May! (Details below 👇🏽)

Leadership Strategy Session

For leaders navigating team dynamics, organizational priorities, and the challenge of maintaining sustainable momentum while delivering results.

Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at 11am PDT

Note: We’re on a slightly different schedule this month. Our LSS is on the second Wednesday rather than our usual first Wednesday.

May's Focus: Getting Your Team Ahead of the Seasonal Shift

April gave your team some clarity about what to carry forward. Now comes the harder part: holding that clarity before everyone’s rhythms start to diverge. Some team members will head into the coming months with more creative bandwidth than usual. Others will be navigating school schedules, family commitments, or a genuine seasonal dip in energy. The result is a team that’s technically present but quietly out of sync, and collaborative work that gets slippery in ways that are hard to name until something drops.

The leaders who navigate this well get ahead of it. They read where their team’s energy actually is, clarify who owns what while everyone is still present, and set clear expectations before the wobble sets in.

We’ll explore themes like:

• Reading where your team’s energy actually is and planning around it honestly

• Clarifying ownership and priorities while everyone is still present and aligned

• Setting realistic expectations for what’s achievable between now and September

• Creating enough structure to hold progress through the uneven months ahead, without overcorrecting into rigidity

May is your last good window before summer makes everything more complicated. Use it to set your team up to work with the season rather than against it.

Bring questions about: Managing mismatched energy levels across your team, what to protect and what to let flex through summer, how to keep collaborative work from getting slippery when availability is uneven, and how to have honest conversations about capacity before the season shifts.

Monthly Momentum Call

For anyone looking to focus on what matters most, clarify goals, and make meaningful progress on what’s important to you.

Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 11am PDT

May's Focus: Make the Seasonal Shift Work for You

There’s a moment in May where you start to feel it. The rhythm that carried you through spring begins to change. Your energy shifts, your schedule starts filling differently, and the months ahead start to look and feel unlike the ones behind you.

Knowing your own seasonal patterns and planning around them before the season fully arrives makes all the difference. Which projects deserve your energy now? What’s worth setting aside until after the summer? Where do you want to protect your focus, and where can you afford to let things breathe?

We’ll explore:

• How to read your own seasonal energy patterns as summer approaches

• Which of your current projects are well matched to where your energy is heading

• What to prioritize for the stretch ahead, and what to set down until after the summer

• How to build momentum that travels through summer’s disruptions rather than depending on conditions that won’t be there

Bring questions about: What your seasonal energy typically looks like and how to plan around it, deciding what to move forward versus set aside until September, building practices that hold through summer’s unpredictability, and how to make the most of the season you’re actually entering.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing.

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, we encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us in April for one or both of these calls.

Our Monthly Momentum Calls are designed to help you focus on what matters most, offering a supportive space to clarify goals, overcome challenges, and make meaningful progress — whether you’re pursuing a creative project, growing your business, or balancing life responsibilities.

Each 60-minute session blends teaching, hot- support-seat coaching, and interactive Q&A, providing real-time support and actionable insights to help you move forward with clarity and purpose.

May's Focus: Make the Seasonal Shift Work for You

There’s a moment in May where you start to feel it. The rhythm that carried you through spring begins to change. Your energy shifts, your schedule starts filling differently, and the months ahead start to look and feel unlike the ones behind you.

Knowing your own seasonal patterns and planning around them before the season fully arrives makes all the difference. Which projects deserve your energy now? What’s worth setting aside until after the summer? Where do you want to protect your focus, and where can you afford to let things breathe?

We’ll explore:

• How to read your own seasonal energy patterns as summer approaches

• Which of your current projects are well matched to where your energy is heading

• What to prioritize for the stretch ahead, and what to set down until after the summer

• How to build momentum that travels through summer’s disruptions rather than depending on conditions that won’t be there

Bring questions about: What your seasonal energy typically looks like and how to plan around it, deciding what to move forward versus set aside until September, building practices that hold through summer’s unpredictability, and how to make the most of the season you’re actually entering.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us Wednesday, March 18, 2026 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Paid subscribers, here’s what you need to know to join the call:

Read more

To be a leader means managing constant complexity. Shifting priorities, team dynamics, capacity challenges, and the pressure to execute while everything keeps changing.

Our Leadership Strategy Sessions are supportive, no-fluff monthly virtual meetings for leaders navigating the real challenges of modern team life.

Each session blends practical guidance, coaching, and peer Q&A. We tackle what’s most timely and relevant, from clarifying team roles and managing capacity to leading through change and building trust.

You don’t need to prep. You just need to show up as you are, with whatever’s on your plate. These sessions are designed to meet you where you are.

May's Focus: Getting Your Team Ahead of the Seasonal Shift

April gave your team some clarity about what to carry forward. Now comes the harder part: holding that clarity before everyone’s rhythms start to diverge. Some team members will head into the coming months with more creative bandwidth than usual. Others will be navigating school schedules, family commitments, or a genuine seasonal dip in energy. The result is a team that’s technically present but quietly out of sync, and collaborative work that gets slippery in ways that are hard to name until something drops.

The leaders who navigate this well get ahead of it. They read where their team’s energy actually is, clarify who owns what while everyone is still present, and set clear expectations before the wobble sets in.

We’ll explore themes like:

• Reading where your team’s energy actually is and planning around it honestly

• Clarifying ownership and priorities while everyone is still present and aligned

• Setting realistic expectations for what’s achievable between now and September

• Creating enough structure to hold progress through the uneven months ahead, without overcorrecting into rigidity

May is your last good window before summer makes everything more complicated. Use it to set your team up to work with the season rather than against it.

Bring questions about: Managing mismatched energy levels across your team, what to protect and what to let flex through summer, how to keep collaborative work from getting slippery when availability is uneven, and how to have honest conversations about capacity before the season shifts.

These monthly calls are part of a paid/premium subscription to Productive Flourishing. 

If you’re not a premium subscriber yet, I encourage you to upgrade your subscription and join us Wednesday, May 13, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Paid subscribers, here’s what you need to know to join the call:

Read more