Sustainable Success Nudge from Your Future Self:
💬 “You’re not burned out because of time. You’re burned out because of misaligned energy.”

This week: Notice where you’re managing your calendar… instead of leading your energy.

Hi Melinda,

What if everything you’ve been taught about success is leading you straight to burnout?

Entrepreneurs are taught that grinding harder, working longer, and pushing through exhaustion is just the cost of doing business.
Burnout is seen as inevitable—something to manage, not prevent.

But what if that’s completely wrong?

That question is at the heart of Sustainable Success.
It’s why I wrote the book, and why the very first line on the back cover starts with:

“What if everything you’ve been taught about success is leading you straight to burnout?”

Because the outdated approach to “success” is rooted in managing time and managing burnout.
You try to get clever with your hours. You squeeze more into your day. You find productivity hacks to help you fit more output into the same 24 hours.
It works… for a while.

Until it doesn’t.

Time management is actually a burnout management system if you’re not careful.
It keeps you in the endless loop of saturate → create → saturate → create (or learn → do → learn do).

And it convinces you that burnout is normal—just something to get better at dealing with.

But that’s not the way I want you to build your business.
You don’t have to manage burnout. You can prevent it entirely.

That’s what happens when you stop fixating solely on managing your time and start leading your energy.

Because energy—not time—is your true currency.
It’s the measure of your presence, your creativity, and your ability to lead with clarity.

Traditional productivity is outdated.
Self-leadership is the new strategy.

Thriving in business isn’t about squeezing more hours out of the day or getting better at what you’re doing—it’s about operating in an entirely different way.
That’s why I spend so much time in Sustainable Success exploring the Create Without Burnout Cycle and the Through Me lens of leadership (page Chapter 3, page 49 and Chapter 2, page 28 respectively).

The productivity world is built to help you survive the burnout cycle.
But I want you to transcend it completely so the impact of your passions are exponential.
Because when you lead your energy instead of your time, you insert the missing pieces—percolation, celebration, and rejuvenation—that keep you resourced in the midst of output.

At the front of my book, I included this quote from my friend Cal, who said something that captures this entire philosophy:

“The concept of being business minded and being business mindful is what matters to me.”

That’s the heart of it.
It’s not about managing your time—it’s about mastering your presence.
It’s about building success that sustains your joy.

👉 This week:
Notice your energy patterns.
Where does your energy expand—and where does it drain?
Are you leveraging percolation as a strategy or are outdated beliefs still whispering that you’re lazy if you take a break?
When was the last time you celebrated a project—and truly acknowledged all you had experienced, regardless of how it turned out?
When was the last time you refueled your own tank so completely that you felt fully alive in the work you’re doing?

Just notice.
Because awareness is what begins the shift.

With energy (not time) as your greatest asset,
Melinda