Carry a little less for a week
A short guide to seeing which part of what you're carrying isn't yours, setting a little of it down, and noticing what happens. What you carry might be tasks, expectations, or decisions you haven't made yet.
Part of the Proa Nova free library: short guides for when something in your working life is changing, or asking to change.
This isn't about doing less than your share. It's about seeing which part of what you carry isn't yours, and what changes when you carry a little less of it.
If what you're carrying is hurting your health, or if easing something could put your job or your income at risk, get support before you change anything. This guide isn't a substitute for that support.
If you're low on energy and have little room to spare, pick the smallest adjustment you can find. One is enough. And if you can't this week, that's fine.
If it weighs on you but you have some room, keep going.
For when something weighs more than it should (tasks, expectations, or decisions you haven't made) in the middle of a change in your working life, and you don't know where to start lightening it without everything falling apart. The load can be a lot of work, but it can also be a search that hasn't taken shape yet.
It weighs on you, and you don't know which part is yours.
Trying to put it all down at once, or touching nothing for fear of what might happen.
One small adjustment, seven days, and a note on what happened.
1. Separate what's yours from what you carry out of habit
Make two columns.
If what weighs on you isn't tasks but decisions, change the columns:
If the pressure feels bigger than the task, take a second look: which deadlines are real, and which come from an expectation nobody said out loud, from comparison, or from fear?
2. Pick one adjustment
One. One that's up to you, meaning you don't need anyone's permission. Small, reversible, and seven days long.
Some examples:
- Check messages twice a day instead of answering right away.
- Reply "I'll look at it and get back to you tomorrow" to anything that isn't urgent.
- Don't start new tasks on Friday afternoon.
- Deliver good, not perfect, on something that isn't critical.
If what weighs on you is decisions, or a search that's still unclear, the adjustment isn't doing less. It's putting a limit on what keeps going around in circles:
- Pick a day and a time to think about it, and outside that time, don't go back over it.
- Don't compare options at night.
- Decide that a decision with no real deadline doesn't get made this week.
- Ask someone close not to ask how it's going for a few days.
3. Do it for seven days and write one line a day
4. Read the week
At the end, look at your notes. Did what you feared happen? What changed in your energy, or in the quality of what you did? Then choose: keep it another week, drop it, or change it.
Some loads don't lighten on their own. In that case, you can ask for a 20-minute conversation, with two concrete examples and one small proposal:
It's a second route, not a required step. It can have a cost, and it depends on where you work: in some places there's room to ask, and in others there isn't. Think it over first. It doesn't have to be this week.
If you need to talk about how you feel before you propose anything, "How to ask for a conversation about your career transition" helps you ask for 20 minutes.
If the question is still alive, take the Quick Map.
If the question is still alive after you've carried a little less, the Quick Map gives you a first, personal read on where you are.
It's free, it's four questions, and it doesn't decide for you or put a label on you.
Quick Map: /en/career-transition/quick-map