In April I spent whole days at my mum's sitting in the sun with a cup of tea, and that's when I saw how close to burnout I'd come. I'd loved most of my work in the months before, which is part of why I didn't see it coming. A lot of capable, senior women are in the same place, with the work they chose also being what's wearing them out, and they blame themselves for it.

When the work is going well

The hardest tiredness to take seriously is the kind that comes with good work. You're learning, the business or the team is better for what you're doing and people are telling you so. Why would you stop?

In my case it was a full time role at Wheelers, working with AI and automations in ways I'd never experienced before. The personal growth was huge and the impact was positive, and I only saw the cost when I got to my mum's in April, after going in overdrive for so long that I simply crashed.

Why it's so easy to miss

When life is full and the work is going well, being tired doesn't get a turn. You put it off until things settle, and they don't settle. A lot of what fills those months is also outside your control, which makes it harder still to see what's yours to change.

Why you're so hard on yourself

What I remember most from those days in the sun is how frustrated I was with myself. I felt I'd allowed it to happen. If a friend had told me the same story I'd never have said she'd allowed anything, yet I think a lot of capable women do exactly this. The tiredness arrives and the first thing we do is look for what we did wrong.

Tired isn't a verdict

Being that tired doesn't mean you've failed or that you're ungrateful for what you have. It tells you where you are, and it's a season like any other. Before you decide anything about your work or your life, it helps to see where you are, and the right next step looks quite different depending on your situation.

This is the territory I work in as a transition coach, and it's what I built the Transition Intelligence framework around.

Where to start

I've put twelve statements together into a short Check-In. You choose how true each one feels for you right now, it takes about five minutes and it's free. You'll see where you are in your transition and what I'd work on next, and you don't need to have anything figured out first.

Take the Messy Middle Check-In