If you’ve been beating yourself up for the project you didn’t finish, the opportunity you turned down, or the commitment you backed out of, this episode is for you. I will reveal why the solution to carrying too much is never to carry it more efficiently. The solution is to put something down.
Why productivity hacks won’t fix what you’re actually carrying. I’ll walk you through the research on mental load and why the self-development industry’s obsession with optimization is a trap. If women realized that subtraction is the answer, the entire system would collapse.
The three types of subtraction: calendar, mental, and strategic. I’ll break down what subtraction looks like when you can’t redesign your schedule, and why strategic subtraction for entrepreneurs means income-affecting decisions like firing draining clients, sunsetting profitable programs, and saying no to misaligned opportunities.
How to use Joyful Ambition: Alignment and Abundance. I’ll teach you to audit where your stated priorities and lived reality don’t match, and why abundance requires space to land. You can’t receive what you have no room to hold.
The women I work with inside Pretty Damn Ambitious they’re redefining ambition on their own terms. Practicing strategic subtraction instead of optimizing their overwhelm. Protecting their capacity instead of proving they can handle more.
If you’re ready to stop drowning in “more” and start building with intention, I’d love to work with you.
This is the exact assessment I used to increase my 2025 revenue by 39%, and the same one women inside Pretty Damn Ambitious use to identify their next breakthrough.
The gap between who you are and who you’re becoming? It’s costing you. Get your baseline score across identity, revenue, sovereignty, and capacity. Stop guessing where to focus. Start knowing.
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UCLA: Research showing women are more likely to notice and remember household tasks that need to be done, even when they’re not the ones doing them (the “mental load”)
Ohio State University 2022: Study finding 66% of working parents experienced burnout, with chronic stress manifesting as depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms
Niksen (Dutch concept): Research showing the art of doing nothing reduces stress hormones, improves immune function, and enhances creative thinking
Neuroscience research on the default mode network: Unstructured time activates the part of the brain responsible for creativity, problem-solving, self-reflection, and long-term planning
Substack
Book
Odell, Jenny Saving Time: How industrial capitalism changed our relationship with time from natural rhythms to standardized units designed to extract maximum productivity
Know a woman who needs to listen to this? Text them this episode. When one woman realizes subtraction is power, she models a different way forward for every woman watching.
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Next Episode: There’s a question you’ve been avoiding. The one that would force you to admit that the metric you’re chasing isn’t actually measuring what you think it is. What if the thing you’ve been measuring as progress is actually evidence that you’re stuck?
What’s one thing you’re ready to subtract? Drop me a DM:
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