It wasn’t about the laptop

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Hey Spark Family,

On Friday morning, I cried over a laptop.

A brand new one. The kind that is supposed to signal progress and growth. A fresh chapter.

Instead, I was staring at a screen that said my data transfer would take 118 hours.

One hundred and eighteen hours.

At first, I actually laughed. It felt absurd. And then I felt the tightness in my chest. The heat rising up my neck. That familiar surge of panic that doesn’t come from the thing itself, but from what the thing represents.

I did not have 118 hours. I did not have 18. I did not even have one extra hour.

I had built my week so precisely that everything depended on alignment. Every meeting mattered. Every deliverable had its place. Every conversation had a purpose. It was a beautifully engineered system with no space for friction.

And it worked. Until it didn’t.

That’s when it hit me.

I wasn’t reacting to technology. I was reacting to capacity.

There is a difference between being busy and being at capacity. Busy is a full calendar. Capacity is the invisible load carried while that calendar runs. It is holding the vision while managing the details. Protecting client experience while growing the team. Thinking three steps ahead while responding in real time. Absorbing emotion. Maintaining standards. Staying steady when others feel uncertain.

And here’s the harder truth.

Most of us don’t feel like we are choosing to carry more. We feel responsible. We feel committed. We feel like this is simply what leadership requires.

I am surrounded by capable, committed people I trust deeply. And even then, I noticed how instinctively I reach for “I’ve got it” before I pause and ask, “Do I need to?”

That instinct is subtle. It sounds noble. It feels strong.

But it accumulates.

When that invisible load gets too heavy, it does not take a crisis to tip you over. It takes a paper cut.

Neuroscience explains this with surprising clarity. When we operate under sustained cognitive and emotional load, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking and emotional regulation, begins to fatigue. When that happens, the nervous system shifts more quickly into threat mode. Small disruptions feel outsized because the system has no buffer left.

The laptop was not the problem. It was simply the moment my nervous system said, “We’re full.”

And that moment was not a failure of resilience. It was feedback.

The real work of leadership is not powering through those moments. It is listening to them.

I did not dramatically redesign my life that morning. Five minutes before a meeting I felt certain I had to attend, I delegated it. I took a few slow breaths. I let my body settle. And I began looking at my calendar differently, not as something to execute perfectly, but as something to design with margin.

It was a small shift. But small shifts are how sustainable growth is built.

Growth without redistribution quietly becomes accumulation. Accumulation, over time, becomes fragility. If a company is scaling, the load must scale differently too. If a role is expanding, systems and support must expand with it. Otherwise, something impressive gets built that requires perfection to sustain.

And perfection is brittle.

If there has been a moment recently when something small felt disproportionately heavy, pause before dismissing it.

You are not weak. You are likely carrying more than anyone can see.

It may not be about the thing at all. It may be about margin.

Here are three questions worth sitting with:

🔹 Where has growth outpaced redistribution?
🔹 Where has the calendar been engineered so tightly that it requires flawless execution?
🔹 What is one small thing that could be released before your nervous system asks louder?

Capacity is admirable.

Margin is wise.

And the leaders who build both are the ones who last.

Grateful,
​Jackie

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