Too many opportunities. Too many relationships.

Hi friends,

I’m writing today at 11.36 pm with 2 more warm proposals due in a few days. I’m not complaining, but boy, are these requests coming in fast this month.

Nobody ever warns you about this specific side of the professional hustle.

We talk a lot about scarcity. We discuss budgeting, the lack of time, and the constant feeling of missing out. We get it. It’s relatable, and most of us have spent a few seasons there.

But there is a totally different way to get stuck, and it is the one we often fail to admit to ourselves. The stuck that happens when your visibility work pays off. You put in the hours, you built the network, you showed up consistently, and now... so many people want a piece of your time at the same moment.

Your LinkedIn gets traction, and your phone won’t stop buzzing. People actually remember you. The invitations, the project requests, the coffee invites, and the “hey, can I pick your brain?” DMs keep piling up.

So I will say it out loud for those in the back: “You can actually have too many good options”. You can be so sought after and have so many open doors that you cannot think straight. It turns out you can actually be too blessed to function.

There is a Bible verse, James 1:8, that says, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”

When you try to say yes to absolutely everything, you end up doing a terrible job at all of it. And I know you’re not being greedy. It is usually because you genuinely don’t want to miss out on the good things meant for you. So, you try to carry every single option at once, and, surprise, you can’t move.

I’ll save you the lecture about time management. You can find a million podcasts on how to optimise your calendar. This is a gift I try to give each of us repeatedly in my articles.

Give yourself the permission to pause.

You need permission to feel that overwhelming stress of being pulled in four different directions by four genuinely great things, and not rush to fix it. You don’t have to perform decisiveness or pretend you have it all figured out. Don’t just blurt out a yes to someone just because saying yes feels less awkward than making them wait.

You are allowed to just sit down and ask yourself: What actually belongs to me right now?

Notice the question isn’t what is available, what makes you look impressive, or what pays the most. What is yours? What fits this exact season of your life, considering whatever else you have going on at home, in your career, and in your own mental health? Asking that question isn’t a sign of weakness. It is called wisdom.

Once you sit with that question long enough, you can finally start sorting through the chaos.

Keep it simple. Take every single opportunity, favour, and project floating around in your brain and put them into one of these four buckets:

• Now: This is mine, it fits my life right now, and I’m moving on it.

• Not Now: This is a great idea, but it’s the wrong timing. I’m letting it go, and I am not going to feel guilty about it.

• Later: I want to come back to this eventually. I’ll write it down so my brain can stop panicking about forgetting it.

• Theirs, Not Mine: This is a wonderful opportunity, but it is meant for someone else. I can even pass it along to a colleague. Look at you, being generous and clear-headed.

Write this down somewhere. It doesn’t need to be a fancy project management app. A scrap of paper or a random phone note works fine. The goal is just to get the clutter out of your head so it stops stealing the energy you need for the things that actually matter.

They say we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught something new.

So remember today that you don’t need to catch every single wave in the ocean. You just have to be calm enough to recognise the one that is actually yours to ride.

Take a breath and do the hard thing. We’re all in this together.

Sydney

P.S. If you’re sitting with something you can’t quite figure out, hit reply or write to us at hello@sydneysam.com. Sometimes you just need to think out loud with someone who gets it.

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