pay yourself first

In this letter

• One framework: The Leadership Equation

• One truth: you cannot build a well when you are thirsty

• One move: pay yourself first

• One line to take with you

• Also: Chasing Enough is out September 22 in Canada

Reading time: 4 minutes.

You know the sentence. You might have said it this week.

I just need to get through September.

September doesn't settle down. It never has. It hands off to October, October hands off to the busiest ten weeks of the year, and then it's January and you're tired in a way sleep doesn't fix…

let’s break the cycle, shall we?

Your calendar budgets one currency. You're spending six.

Time is the only one a calendar can see. Thirty minutes here, a free Thursday there. If the hours fit, the plan fits.

The hours aren't what you're spending. Between now and New Year's you're also spending physical energy, emotional capacity, mental bandwidth, relational capital and money. Five of those six have no ledger. Nothing tracks them. Nothing warns you when the balance gets low. But you feel it.

Emotional capacity usually goes first. Irritability. Reactive. Overstimulated.

Nobody has ever put that on a plan….

That's the Leadership Equation in action: Resources over demands gives you creativity. Demands over resources gives you reactivity. Every fall we plan a hundred percent of the demands and zero percent of the resources…

Call it what it is. An unfunded plan.

The shift this week

You can't rest your way out of November in November. The building happens now, while you still have arms ;)

Your next move

Pay yourself first.

You know this rule from money. There's never anything left at the end of the month, so you move it out first, before the month gets its hands on it.

Same here. Book the chiro. Pre-book the massage for the week you already know will be the heaviest one. Put an afternoon of nothing in October. A date night. The workout. One morning you don't open the laptop.

Do it now, before it fills. I know, I know.

You're already in it. Do it anyway. You'll thank me in November.

Then say it out loud.

Tell somebody what your capacity actually is this fall. Your partner. Your team. The friend who's about to ask you for more of you.

This is the part that feels selfish and isn't. Nobody around you is a mind reader. They're planning around the version of you who said yes last time. They guess high. Then you resent them for asking.

Naming it is the kind thing to do. It's information they've been missing.

Then ask for help before you're desperate. Or decline one thing you already know you don't have room for.

The hard part isn't the booking. Something will come for that October afternoon. Whether you move it is the whole practice. Protect it.

Three prompts to sit with

Which currency is funding this quarter, and how much of it is left today?

Who is planning around a version of me that doesn't exist anymore?

What's the one thing I already know I need to decline?

One line to take with you

You can't build a well when you're thirsty.

My episode with Marc Champagne on Behind The Human went up this morning. Chasing versus choosing, and the reframe September actually needs.

🎧 Tune in HERE: Choosing Vs. Chasing

Leadership that lasts,

Mandy

P.S. Chasing Enough is out September 22 in Canada and October 20 in the US. Pre-orders before September 28 come with the audiobook, the Well-Resourced Toolkit, and a live session with me in December. Pre-order here.

P.P.S. The book tour is going on the road. If you want to be in the room, register here.