How to carry less when everything feels heavy

Some weeks feel heavy for no particularly good reason. Nothing catastrophic has happened, nobody has set anything on fire, and yet everything feels harder than it should. Your brain feels full, your shoulders sit permanently near your ears, and tasks that normally take ten minutes suddenly require a snack, a sigh, and a brief internal negotiation.

Ellie knows this feeling well. She’s capable, creative, and doing the work, yet still ends the day wondering how she’s exhausted after what looks, on paper, like a fairly reasonable amount of effort. This isn’t a motivation issue or a mindset problem. It’s a carrying-too-much problem.

The kind of heavy nobody warns you about

Most business heaviness doesn’t come from big disasters. It comes from accumulation. Open tabs you mean to come back to. Ideas you don’t want to forget, so you keep holding them in your head like fragile glassware. Decisions that technically matter, but not today. Other people’s expectations quietly climb into your backpack without asking.

Ellie carries all of it because she cares, because she notices, because she thinks things through. That care has a cost. The Pretty Way doesn’t respond by telling her to push through. It asks a more useful question: what are you still carrying that no longer needs to be held like this?

A real-life moment that explained everything

This week gave me a very clear example of that lesson. I finally decided to record a Skillshare class. The idea felt solid, the plan made sense, and I created a very pretty animated email signature to go with it. Then Gmail quietly decided animated GIFs were no longer welcome in email signatures. Cue confusion, testing it six different ways, and asking ChatGPT what on earth was going on.

The original idea died right there. Older versions of me might have scrapped the whole thing and sulked. I pivoted. The Signature Scribble is now a pretty and clickable email signature. No animation. Still useful. Still lovely. That moment wasn’t annoying for no reason. It was asking for flexibility rather than perfection. The story always carries the lesson.

Carrying less starts with noticing

Carrying less is a skill, not a personality trait. Ellie doesn’t need more discipline or better habits. She needs fewer things hanging off her mental coat rack. Carrying less starts with noticing what actually feels heavy, not what should feel heavy. Sometimes it’s a system that almost works but quietly drains you. Sometimes it’s a task that no longer fits the business you’re becoming. Sometimes it’s a decision you keep forcing even though it doesn’t need to be made yet.

Naming the weight helps. Writing it down helps even more. Brains are for ideas, not long-term storage.

Softer systems do some of the carrying for you

This is where softer systems matter. They don’t exist to make you more productive or optimised. They exist to stop you from carrying everything alone. Ellie doesn’t need complexity. She needs somewhere to put things so they stop rattling around in her head. A place for ideas so they don’t tap her on the shoulder at midnight. A place for notes so nothing has to stay on repeat. A rhythm that works on tired Tuesdays, not only on her most productive day of the year.

Some weeks ask for a different response

Some weeks aren’t about pushing harder. They’re about responding differently. Carrying less might mean choosing one meaningful task instead of five, postponing a decision without spiralling, simplifying something that has quietly become ridiculous, or resting before feeling like you’ve earned it. Ellie doesn’t need to prove her worth through exhaustion.

When she sets things down, her nervous system settles. When her nervous system settles, clarity shows up. When clarity shows up, the next step stops feeling so loud.

The Pretty Way forward

Carrying less isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about doing what matters without dragging everything else along for the ride. If everything feels heavy right now, pause before blaming yourself and look at the load instead.

This is the kind of work we explore inside The Dotty Duo - turning everyday chaos into clarity using storytelling and gentle systems that support real humans. 

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Ellie doesn’t need to be stronger. She needs fewer things to carry.