The tired that has nothing to do with sleep

There's a specific kind of tired that has nothing to do with how much sleep you got.

My phone had already sent me multiple notifications before I had even started my coffee this morning. All AI-related. A new tool update, multiple news alerts including OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman’s take on the job apocalypse and Pope Leo’s statement that society needs to slow down on AI developement. By the time I actually made my coffee, I had already absorbed more disruption than a week would have asked of me five years ago. All of this before I had even checked my work email.

Here’s the thing, it's not that any one of those single things are devastating. It's that none of it ever stops.

The technology doesn't have an off switch and the news cycle certainly doesn't either. Somewhere in the middle of keeping up, adapting, learning, absorbing, recalibrating, most of us are also trying to hold down jobs, raise kids, stay present in relationships, and figure out who we want to be when all of this settles. 

This is where someone usually asks me, it is going to settle right? Well hold on, because I don't think that's true anymore. This is the terrain we have to navigate now and for the foreseeable future. The question isn't when does it slow down. It's how do you stay grounded inside the swirl of it.

If you've felt the weight of that this week, you're paying attention. That's not weakness. That's just plain honesty.

There's a distinction in change leadership I want to share. Maybe you know it and in that case it’s a reminder, but there is a difference between adapting and integrating.

Adapting is what happens when external conditions shift and you adjust your behavior to match. It's reactive and necessary. But it has no natural end point. You can adapt forever, and if adapting is all you're doing, you'll always be one change behind, running on a treadmill that keeps speeding up.

Integrating is different. It's the internal process of absorbing what changed, reconciling it with who you are and what you value, and coming out the other side still recognizable to yourself. It takes longer and it asks you to stop moving for a minute. In a world that never turns off, to stop moving for a moment is almost impossible to do by accident.

The people who navigate constant disruption without losing themselves aren't adapting faster. They're integrating more deliberately. They're making small, intentional decisions about what they carry forward and what they decide to intentionally put down. They're choosing what gets their attention instead of letting everything compete for it equally.

This is not what I would call a productivity move, it's an identity one and it's the difference between being changed by disruption and actually authoring your way through it.

One thing to try this week

If you’re feeling tired from the constant “on” state of the world, choose one thing that you will deliberately not keep up with for the next seven days. Not because it doesn't matter but because you're choosing what gets your attention this week, instead of letting everything fight for it equally. Notice how you feel when you make that choice on purpose - does it give you a little bit of relief or breathing room? 

🩵 One Thing I'm Loving

Obsidian. If you haven't heard of it, it's a note-taking app, but that description doesn't do it justice. It's where I'm storing my “brain” right now. Every idea, every framework, every piece of thinking that matters to me lives there, in plain text files I own completely. No platform lock-in. No subscription holding my thinking hostage. Fully portable, which means I can bring it into any other tool or AI I'm working with. In a world where everything feels uncertain, there's something quietly powerful about knowing your own thinking is yours to keep.

Remember, you are still the author of what comes next.

Warmly,

Heather

Heather Stoffle | Anchored in Possibility™