An old African proverb has been sitting with me all week: if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. I've spent most of my career going fast. This September, I'm choosing to go far.
As I start this month, I feel a renewed sense of purpose and focus. September has always felt like a beginning to me. I often create during this month, and my companies are often born during it.
Three months ago I started my transition out of a job that I loved. The opportunity to spread my wings more broadly has been scary but enticing, and as someone with ADHD and autism, there's also been a significant amount of overwhelm — a million thoughts and ideas running around in my head at once.
This week, finally, I found my centre. Under my coach's expert tutelage, I've narrowed things down to three big projects to carry me to the end of the year, alongside the personal project of becoming a grandma.
The process of going from eleven focus points to three exposed some huge issues in my psyche. I'm a productivity junkie. I love to keep busy, and it tracks — throughout my career, colleagues and managers would ask if I'd somehow found the secret to time travel or freezing time. I hadn't. I have ADHD, and I'm addicted to being productive.
It's served me well in the past. It no longer serves me. Perimenopausal insomnia, purpose-driven work in the people experience space, and a busy home and family life mean I'm at high risk of another burnout episode. So I've had to take my coach's advice, trust her to lead me, and step back to think about what actually matters.
Coincidentally, and fortuitously, the Work Life Renaissance is my main project — which means I get a front-row seat to my own. Realising that my default setting is to work seven days a week has been confronting. I can't fully explain the anxiety I felt spending a whole day without working, apart from two minutes to send something off my laptop.
My next project focuses on the stories of Guyanese women. Just as I'm writing the new chapter of my own life, I can't wait to dig into theirs, and to find how much I have in common with other women who share my roots.
And the final big project reimagines the world of redundancy. I've spoken to so many people who've been through a redundancy process, and I've sat on the other side of the table — developing restructuring plans, consulting with trade unions, hammering out the financial implications and long-term strategy that a good restructure requires. Since I started this work in 2010, much has changed about the world of work, but sadly the approaches taken to redundancy have either stagnated or, worse, gone backwards — in effectiveness, in support for individuals, and in joined-up thinking between exiting organisations, the legal profession, and the myriad of support structures meant to help. I'm going to fix this. Consider it my crusade.
Here's the thing about a crusade, though — and about three ambitious projects landing in the same season as becoming a grandmother: none of it gets done alone. I've spent years going fast, building things solo, proving I could carry the whole load myself. But going far, properly far, means finding the people who complement what I bring and building with them instead of around them. As a founder now, that's the shift I'm making deliberately — seeking out collaborators, co-creators and unlikely partners, because together really is more than the sum of our parts.
So that's the plan for the final part of the year — and an acknowledgement, and a public humble brag, that I'm finally finding the space to slow down, to go fast, and to focus on just a few things.
Wish me luck.