Why Doing More Stops Working at a Certain Point

My first warning sign was an eye twitch.

I was in a season of loving my work and drowning in it at the same time. Commuting across the city between sessions and classes, answering messages on the drive like the Lincoln Lawyer, and still worrying I wasn't doing enough for the projects on my plate. Then my eye started twitching.

And I want you to notice what I did next, because I know I'm not the only one. My honest reaction to my own body waving a flag was: but all the coming weeks are already scheduled?!

So I kept going.

Effort and Force Look Identical From the Outside

For years I would have told you I was simply making an effort. And I was. I loved my work. The doing itself was never the issue.

The distinction I couldn't see then — and the one I watch women miss every week in my work now — is between effort and force.

Effort is energy applied with your system's consent. It has a rhythm. It spends and recovers. It responds when something inside says enough for today.

Force is the same energy applied over your own signals. The calendar looks the same, the competence looks the same. What changed is that a part of you already said no — and you overrode her.

The inconvenient detail: force works. It delivers. It hits the deadlines and keeps everyone happy. That is exactly why capable women can't tell the two apart. The results keep coming, so on paper there is no problem to solve.

Your Body Runs the Accounting

Paper is one thing. The body keeps different books.

In my case the accounting showed up first as the eye twitch, then as those long blank moments of opening an app and staring at it with no idea why I did. Dulled senses, checked-out evenings, zero desire to hear from people I love. In nervous system terms, a system pushed past its capacity for too long starts pulling the plug in small doses.

The Western approach has precise language for this — sympathetic overdrive tipping into freeze. I recognize it now. Back then I called it "being busy." (My inner judge had a field day with that one later: you literally teach this.)

The Bamboo Test

When I teach resilience, I use bamboo. It is one of the most resilient plants there is — and incredibly flexible. It bends all the way down and comes back.

That is the test I offer you. Effort bends and returns. Force holds its shape no matter what, until something gives — a twitching eye, a flat evening, a body that stops volunteering information because it learned nobody is reading the reports.

So instead of asking am I doing too much, ask a more precise question: does rest actually restore me, or do I just check out? When I finish the work, am I tired — or emptied out? When did my body last get a vote?

Tired is effort. You can build a whole beautiful life on effort.

Emptied out is force. And no amount of doing more will fix what doing-over-yourself created.

→ The Feminine Way is where I teach the way back

Related reading: Week 1 — Why You Feel Overwhelmed Even When Life Looks Fine