What Is Decision Fatigue?
Why Naming Emotions Works
Why “Resistance” Feels Like Protection
Why “Just Focus” Doesn’t Work
Why task initiation is hard—and how to meet yourself with compassion and strategy.
Numbing as a Safety Strategy
We’ve all been there: you know there’s an important email to send, a tough conversation to have, or a milestone you’ve been putting off—yet somehow you find yourself scrolling social media, reorganizing your desk, or making yet another cup of coffee. What starts as a one-off escape can quickly turn into a default pattern. Before you know it, avoidance becomes your habit, and you feel stuck in a loop of “I’ll get to it later” that never ends. Avoidance isn’t about laziness or moral failing. It’s a deeply human response to stress, fear, and overwhelm. But when it becomes our go-to coping strategy, it chips away at our confidence, self-trust, and sense of forward momentum. The good news? With awareness and practical tools, you can start interrupting avoidance and move toward intentional action.
Even the most resilient, highly skilled person can hit a wall of stress that exhausts their bandwidth. When life throws one challenge after another—tight deadlines, family crises, health scares—our nervous system can become chronically “primed” for overwhelm. We stay stuck in a stress cycle, oscillating between freeze, fight, or flight, and never quite getting back to calm. That’s when a simple toolkit of quick resets becomes essential. Rather than waiting fora break in the action—or hoping that “things calm down”—you can reach for a strategy that brings your system back toward its optimal zone. Over time, having a suite of science-backed options helps you maintain steady resilience, so you can meet both the daily grind and the unexpected stressors with more ease. Below, I’ll introduce the four categories from my Stress Reset Menu handout—plus why each matters, how to use it, and ideas for customizing your own go-to list.
Start with curiosity
Foundations of Prioritization: Core Tools for Making Decisions When Everything Feels Urgent
For so many of us—especially those navigating ADHD, anxiety, or high-demand lives—prioritization doesn’t come naturally. It’s not about laziness or lack of discipline; it’s about managing a constant flow of inputs without a clear filter. You know the feeling: the to-do list is a mile long, everything feels important, and your brain is bouncing between urgency and inertia. That’s why I created the Foundations of Prioritization handout—a visual guide to three core tools that help reduce overwhelm and build sustainable habits around decision-making. These aren’t trendy hacks. They’re time-tested frameworks that help you move from reactive scrambling to intentional, values-based choices. Let’s walk through what each one does—and how they work together
