The Broken Excel Sheet

I spent twenty years optimizing systems while completely ignoring the warning signs in my own.

In consulting operations, I believed more output equaled more value. I chased complexity. Solved problems before they were mine. Built solutions and pitched them before anyone asked. I could spot capacity thresholds in every system I touched. The moment a process started to buckle, the exact point where a team would hit diminishing returns.

Except the one I was running on.

When our team doubled, I led the migration of our scheduling and contract tracking from Excel to Salesforce. The old system couldn't scale, too many rows, too many formulas, too much data for a tool that was never designed to handle it. It would freeze. Crash. Lose hours of work in a single misstep.

So we rebuilt it. Found a system that could grow with us. Made the whole operation more sustainable.

And then I kept running like that broken Excel sheet: overloaded, over-functioning, duct-taped together with grit.

I didn't see the irony at the time. I was too busy proving I could handle it.

Here's what I missed: Systems, especially urgency-driven ones, reward that kind of self-abandonment.

They make it easy to ignore the slow creep of exhaustion. Easy to confuse performance with purpose. Easy to call burnout "success" as long as the work keeps shipping.

The system doesn't care if you're running on fumes. It cares that you're running.

And if you're good at pushing through… if you've built a whole identity around being the person who makes it work - the system will let you keep going long past the point where you should have stopped.

Transitioning into DEI work started to shift something in me. I had to unlearn fast fixes and quick wins. I had to get comfortable being uncertain, uncomfortable, quiet. Systemic change doesn't move in heroic sprints. It moves in small, intentional steps.

But I didn't fully grasp the lesson until the decision was made for me.

When I was laid off, I finally had to reckon with what I'd been running from. What was I working for? What was enough? And why had I tied so much of my worth to a system that could let me go without a second thought?

Losing the role didn't just force me to stop. It forced me to ask whether I'd been building something sustainable, or just something that looked impressive while it lasted.

That's when I realized something that should have been obvious all along:

Rest isn't the reward for finishing. It's a requirement for continuing.

These days, "enough" isn't about output. It's about alignment.

It's about living my values deeply and unapologetically, even when urgency whispers that I should be doing more. It's about trusting my pace, even when the culture around me is still sprinting. It's about recognizing that sustainability isn't a personal failing to overcome, it's a structural issue to design for.

I still get it wrong sometimes. I still catch myself slipping back into old patterns, saying yes when I mean no, pushing through when I should be pausing.

But now I work hard to notice the warning signs. And I choose to listen to them.

So here's my question for you: Where have you kept going long after the system broke?

What part of you is still running like that Excel sheet - overloaded, over-functioning, held together by sheer will?

And what would it look like to rebuild it into something that could actually sustain you?

Because here's the truth: The work will always ask for more. The system will always reward the person who gives it. But somewhere along the way, we have to decide what we're willing to give. And, maybe more importantly, what we're not.

That's not opting out. That's designing for the long haul.