You can’t fill a leaky bucket until you fix the leak.
I have a habit of turning an idea into an obligation. I get excited about something I could build, convince myself it has potential, and suddenly I have another business to work on. Another reason to open my laptop. Another place to spend my time, money, and energy.
For a while, the excitement carries me. I’m learning! I’m creating! I’m an entrepreneur!
Then the hype wears off, and I’m left deciding whether I actually want the work that comes with the idea.
I have countless examples of this. My personal development community, my podcast, my concept for a fitness studio, a cannabis beverage, and the most recent concept for a family-memory keeping app. I’m proud that we built it - in general I've always been proud of what we built and it's helped me along my career in endless ways. I’m grateful for what I learned, in this most recent instance, most especially excited about what I learned about using AI to bring an idea to life. But the launch fizzled. We didn’t build the user base we hoped for, and eventually we decided to close it.
I can make peace with the money. What’s harder to sit with is the time. Especially these days.
There were literal hours I spent working that I could have spent with my daughters. Hours I could have spent moving my body, being with Ronnie, or enjoying the life I was supposedly working so hard to make better. Every idea looked like possibility. I was much slower to see what pursuing it would cost. And if I’m being honest, the possibility of building a successful business wasn’t the only thing keeping me at my laptop… I liked what being an entrepreneur seemed to say about me.
It made me feel ambitious. Important. Like I was doing something with my potential. Having another project gave me something to point to as evidence that I was trying hard.
Busy is my nervous system’s default setting. Give me an open hour, and I can find a way to make it productive. Give me an idea, and I can find a reason it needs to become a business. Underneath all that activity is a belief I’m still working to untangle: I earn my worth through my output. That belief makes it very easy to start something and very difficult to feel good about stopping. Because when being productive is how you reassure yourself that you’re enough, closing the laptop can bring up some uncomfortable questions. Who am I when I’m not building something? Am I wasting my potential? Shouldn’t I be doing more?
Another idea is a very convenient way to avoid sitting with the answers. But:
You can’t fill a leaky bucket until you fix the leak.
And Darling, some of our leaks are very easy to praise. People admire how much you get done. They’re impressed that you’re starting something. They tell you they don’t know how you do it all. You might be wondering the same thing. You might also be wondering why, with all that effort, you still don’t have enough time for the things you say matter most. Your habit may look different from mine: Maybe you spend money every time you need something to look forward to. Maybe you stay up scrolling and spend the next day exhausted. Maybe you say yes before checking whether you have anything left to give.
You probably already know which habit it is. You know how you feel afterward. You know what it costs you. And you may have been trying to compensate for it by becoming better at something else: A more organized calendar. A stricter budget. A better morning routine. Those things can help. But it’s worth asking how much easier they would become if you stopped doing the thing that keeps making them necessary. For me, that means allowing an idea to remain an idea. Getting curious without immediately committing. Taking a beat before spending money or handing over another evening of my life. It also means letting the career I’ve already built receive more of my attention, and letting time with my family count as a perfectly good use of my potential.
I’m still ambitious. I have things I want to build, earn, experience, and become. I want to give those things a real chance by being more thoughtful about where my effort goes. Before I add another habit, project, or promise, I want to get better at asking what I could stop.
So here’s what I want you to consider this week:
What’s the habit you already know you need to quit, and what time, money, or energy would you get back if you did?
Picture an ordinary day with that resource available to you again. What would you finally have room for?
