When to Hustle and When to Rest: A High-Performer’s Guide

[00:00:00] I’ve built a business by helping high performing women and allies take action, but this summer, I made the decision to actually pause.
In today’s episode, I’m sharing exactly how I knew it was time to rest instead of push, and how you could tell the difference in your own life as well as leadership
If you’ve been stuck in go, go, go mode and wondering if you’re just tired or done, this is for you.

If you’re navigating burnout, transition, or just trying to lead with more intention, make sure to subscribe. I post weekly content that helps ambitious women and allies just like you lead with clarity without sacrificing yourself in the process.
As a professional keynote speaker, a coach, as well as a business owner for the last seven years, I am no stranger when it comes to busy seasons, but this summer for the very first time ever, I’ve put my business on a sabbatical.
Not because I couldn’t keep going, but
because I realized that the most [00:01:00] strategic move I could make was to actually pause. Now, this is easier said than done. I’m sure that this probably resonates for you. I know it was the case for me because for years I had been conditioned to equate progress with momentum, right? One of the things that I found, especially as a woman, especially as a mom, and even as a leader, in terms of the expectations that we have by society.
We’re told to keep pushing, right? Even when our bodies, even when our brains, even when our intuition says otherwise, ‘ cause for a lot of us, our success is based on the results that we’re showing. And momentum, in a way, showcases results. So if you’re not proactively doing something all the time, then what do you have to show for it?
So it’s taken me. Many years. In fact, I, talk about this often. I mentioned it, in a very recent episode too on my, word of the year when it was BOUNDARIES. [00:02:00] My word of the year in 2024 was actually EASY. So I really made it a point to rewire this expectation of what success looked like to always be doing things to instead take it to be that success can be easy, right? And exactly what does that look like. And through that process, I actually learned that taking time to rest, or I don’t even wanna say taking the easy route, but making things simple, and streamlined. It’s not quitting, it’s simply strategic repositioning. So when you look back to my situation back in March, I was deep in my keynote speaking season.
I do a lot of International Women’s Day and women’s history month events, and I was completely booked out for 2024. And that said, by the time that that was done, I had also sold my book in March as well. So coming into April, I was full on into writing my manuscripts, and very [00:03:00] recently, now it’s June and I’ve submitted it and I realize I could keep pushing myself over the summer, but at the same time too, I also realize that come September, usually I have another, bump in my business. People are back from summer. Their kids are back at school. Especially in the event industry folks start planning events again starting late August, for the following year. And I know it’s gonna get really busy again. So I was really faced with a choice at this point.
I could either protect this next season that I’m moving into, which I know it’s gonna get really, really busy. Or I could try to, up my game again and pack on other projects and pack on other ideas and different things to test and muscle my way through summer. And ultimately, I decided that by taking a rest, I’m not quitting.
I’m actually repositioning myself for the next busy season.
Now there were multiple different signs that kind of nudged me to knowing that [00:04:00] it is time for me to take a rest. And it’s not just for me to, it’s actually my entire team. We’re taking a bit of a reset, for the July and August months, but here’s some signs that I knew that myself as well as everybody else was more or less ready for it.
So one of the big signs for me was starting to resent everything. So work that I absolutely love to do, you know, certain things like, creating content or writing material, I’m hesitant to use the word burnt out because I, I’m not in burnout obviously, but I had poured so much of my energy and myself into my book.
That taking time to do other creative tasks like that, like writing, I really started to resent it, right? So even things that I absolutely love to do, the types of tasks that are the reason that I started this specific type of business to begin with.
I find myself, either really avoiding it, procrastinating on it, or resenting [00:05:00] it, right? And these are not things that we want.
Another thing that I’ve noticed too is I’m tired, right? And I’m not tired from lack of sleep. I’m still sleeping eight hours a day, on average. And it’s just, my motivation is kinda lacking at this point.
I, don’t wanna say necessarily it’s soul fatigue. It’s kind of cheeseball, but that’s probably the best way to describe it. It is just, I’m not like there. That spark isn’t there. I’m a little bit depleted.
Another sign is that while I’m highly, highly productive and I have been the last couple of months, I haven’t really felt fully present for any of it.
When I am, deep down focused mode and work, I am kind of there, but I feel like my brain’s being pulled in 8 million other directions. Same thing when I’m at home. And by the way, that’s really kind of funny because I work from home. My office is in my basement right now where I’m talking to you.
But that said, even when I’m at home with my family, I find my brain’s kind of running away and thinking about things that I should be working on in work. And that’s not necessarily a great [00:06:00] position to be in. Because truth is the things that my brain’s thinking of when I should be with my family.
They’re not really super important when it comes to the, business. It’s things that, I feel will make me feel like I’m accomplishing more than I am by just sitting there and relaxing with my family. There’s been some resistance to sit and rest and that actually tells me that it’s, it is time to do that rest.
Say if they goes to when you’re working with a team or working with other people, how to tell whether or not they potentially could use the break too. Some things that stood out to me. With my own organization is, all of us, we basically work part-time hours. It’s something I’m very, very proud of in my business, how much we accomplish.
Working anywhere from like a 20 to 30 hour work week. So a lot of folks on my team are in school or they have other jobs and they’re doing this part-time and they themselves are coming out of a very busy season because between the work that we do was [00:07:00] very, very busy. But then that adds, adds that everything else going on in their personal life and their other goals and aspirations.
So when it came to deciding how to position the business for the next couple of months. Taking a mini reset or a mini sabbatical made a lot of sense for all of us, not just for me.
So let’s kind of revisit what rest actually looks like. So rest doesn’t mean that I’m gonna completely shut everything down. I’m not gonna, put everything on autoresponder and just be like, peace out and no social media or any of that , because if I didn’t have these systems in place, this content wouldn’t be going out.
So what rest is actually gonna look like for us is we are kind of stripping everything down to the bare minimum that we need to continue to get the results that we’ve currently been getting. So different systems in my own business would be things like our content creation, making sure that our social media engagement is up, right?
Continuing our marketing cadence for things like email newsletter [00:08:00] and things like that. Making sure we’re taking time to connect with you guys. My action allies, right? And again, it doesn’t mean that we’re doing nothing. We’re still creating time for the things that are the most important, the things that I know are gonna move the needle and set us up for success.
Once our next busy season comes around, but in the process, it’s also creating more capacity for us all to actually rest. So when I say rest, we’re actually reducing our hours overall as well as our operating expenses. And we’re doing this to be able to have time to actually, enjoy stuff. We’re purposely not trying to fill it with extra work.
We’re gonna take time to do things that we actually enjoy. So for me this summer, I love taking the summer off with my kids. I feel so privileged to be able to do it. I’ve built and designed my life to be able to handle this at this point, after. Working a standard corporate job and commuting over 20 hours a week.
So this is something that’s [00:09:00] been a very long time coming that I’ve wanted for a very long time. So that said, it’s when we move into our summer mini sabbatical. I’m still gonna be checking in with my email. I’m still going to have, coaching calls and client delivery because that doesn’t just go away.
But the time that I was taking for things like projects, like things that were new. Launches and, new services and books and things like that, we’re putting the pause on that. So it’s just kind of maintenance mode. And because of that, I’m gonna be able to cut my hours in half, which is gonna be amazing.
’cause actually it serves two purposes. My kids are outta school for summer and they’re not in camp. So I’m gonna be transitioning, we call it Camp Mommy, where I’m gonna be hanging out with my kids, but everything else gets moved around them. But it’s gonna be very, similar for my team.
They’re gonna have time to actually rest. They’re gonna be in between semesters at school. So overall, it’s going to create kind of the reset that we all need [00:10:00] to be able to hit the ground running again.
So again, it’s not just about, collapsing and doing absolutely nothing. It’s about having clarity in what actions you’re taking are actually moving the needle and only focusing on those things in order to create time, capacity, and energy to be able to focus on things that will actually, more or less nurture and, reset your energy levels.
So what things will bring you joy? What things will bring you, rest? What things will bring you like increased energy? That’s really the focus.
And one thing that’s super important to remember, and this took me forever to kind of rewire when it comes to my Type- A overachieving, perfectionist go, go, go attitude. And it’s that you don’t have to earn your rest. Right rest is actually entirely strategic. The more you rest, the higher you can perform at a later date.
I had a, mentor that once to describe this to me perfectly, when I was having a [00:11:00] lot of resistance in stopping when I had momentum. And I used to be a, competitive power lifter. And this mentor of mine knew this, and he had asked me at that point, he is like, Corrie, when you hit a plateau, that you can’t lift more than you’re currently lifting, what’s one of the first things that you do?
And if you’re familiar at all with, athleticism and, working out, the number one thing that you do is you deload a little bit. So you actually drop your weights to give your body some time to rest and recover because then by the time you give it that space, it rebuilds stronger than it was before and allows you to break through that plateau.
So learning that lesson was super, super helpful for me and learning that. I don’t need to earn my rest. The rest part of it is important. It’s necessary in order for my body, my minds, my energy to reset at a higher level than it was before. So that when I do come back, I come back at a stronger and higher [00:12:00] capacity.
So having misbelief that you need to earn your rest. That belief ultimately keeps you stuck. It kept me stuck. It’s gonna keep you stuck too. You can rest because it’s the time, right? It’s, strategically makes the most sense, not because you’ve hit a wall. Ultimately, I am such a huge proponent of this, and if you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know everything that I share is not burnout, prevention, and that you’re dealing with burnout after it’s happened.
Everything that I share with you are all action-focused strategies that you could take to avoid burnout altogether. And rest is one of them. It is so, so, so important.
So I’d love to know what is your biggest clue that it’s time to rest instead of push through. Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear how y’all recognize it in yourself.
I truly hope that you found my sharing this today valuable. If you are stuck in that go, go, go cycle that we’ve been talked about this entire episode, please, please, please take my free overwhelm culprit [00:13:00] quiz.
It’s gonna help you pinpoint what’s actually fueling. Your sense of overwhelm and why you feel you need to go, go, go, and it’s gonna help give you a clear path forward, and that’s including rest, clarity, and momentum. You can find it at www.corrielo.com/overwhelmculprit, and we’ll make sure that we link to it in the show notes.
If what I share today actually, resonates, and you’re like, you know what, I, feel I really do need to rest, I need to pause. More than likely I’m gonna predict it. Right now, your overwhelm culprit is lack of conditioning. So if that’s you, take the quiz, let me know in the comments.
Thanks so much for being here, and I will see you on the next episode.
Thanks for checking out the next step with Cory Lowe. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a review. Together we’ll transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.