You Don't Have a Time Problem. You Have a Pleasure Problem.
All in the space of one week I moved house. Launched a new business. Hosted a women's event. Built not one but two businesses for other people. Supported 1:1 clients. Navigated what I can only describe as a fun little parade of dating disasters: ghosted, ignored, "cheated" on and told very politely "I've chosen to pursue someone else." All in the same week.
I want to tell you that I had a breakdown. That would make sense. That would be the appropriate response.
I got eight hours of sleep every night. I exercised daily. I kept my house clean, my body nourished, and my nervous system remarkably, annoyingly intact.
Not because I'm superhuman. Not because I've optimised my morning routine or found the right productivity framework or swallowed a shit ton of vitamins (or is it creatine we're being fed now?). But because I've spent years learning how to move energy through my body instead of stockpiling it.
Sexual energy specifically.
I know that might make some of you shift in your seat. We're allowed to talk about burnout. We're allowed to talk about hustle culture and nervous system regulation. But say sexual energy in a non sexual context and something gets uncomfortable, like we've confused the conversation.
We haven't. Stay with me.
The Women Who Don't Break
Here's what I've actually noticed: the women who are exhausted aren't the ones doing the most. They're the ones doing everything from depletion. Running on the need to control everything and optimise every minute and a vague sense of obligation. Moving through their days without any real internal source.
And the ones who seem to carry more without breaking? They haven't figured out better time management. They've figured out how to stay connected to their pleasure while they move through all of it.
This isn't a productivity hack. It's not a mindset shift. It's something more inconvenient and more interesting than either of those things.
It's a completely different relationship to your sexual energy.
What Pleasure as a Source Actually Feels Like
There's a current underneath everything I do. It isn't adrenaline. It isn't caffeine. It isn't even passion for what I do in the way people usually mean it. It's something more animal than that. The same energy that makes you really want something, that pulls you toward pleasure, that makes you feel like you're actually inside your life rather than just administrating it from above.
When I stay connected to that, I can do a lot. When I lose it — when I'm moving from my head, forcing, performing, managing — I'm useless by Tuesday.
Most high-achieving women are running on a version of adrenaline they've rebranded as motivation. It works, for a while. It builds things. But it doesn't replenish. And at some point the body stops cooperating because you've been doing all of it from empty.
Pleasure as a source of energy operates differently. It isn't about doing less. It's about staying connected to something alive in you while you do the work. The difference between a woman who is depleted by her week and a woman who moves through the same week and still feels like herself at the end of it isn't willpower. It's whether she stayed embodied while she moved.
The Disconnection Problem
You don't have a time problem.
You have a pleasure problem. A disconnection problem. A "I'm moving so fast, so disassociated, I've completely left my body behind" problem.
Most conversations about burnout focus on output — you're doing too much, rest more, say no more. And sometimes that's true. But I've watched women rest extensively and still feel hollow. The issue isn't the volume of what they're doing. It's that they're doing all of it from a place that has no juice in it.
The nervous system that's running on obligation and control even when it's resting is still in a low-grade state of strain. It isn't actually recovering because it hasn't located the thing that actually replenishes it.
That thing is pleasure. Not the performative kind. Not the kind you schedule and then feel vaguely guilty about. The kind that lives in your body, in sensation, desire, in the felt experience of being genuinely alive in your own skin.
When you're connected to that, the hard weeks are still hard. But they don't hollow you out.
What Kept Me Intact
That's what kept me intact that week. Not discipline. Not willpower. Not a single supplement.
I was genuinely enjoying being alive inside my body. Even when it was a lot. Even when it was hard. Even when someone chose someone else and I ran out of coffee.
Not because I was bypassing the hard things (trust me I felt all of them - the good the bad the ugly). But I was feeling them from inside my body, not managing them from above it. There's a difference, and it's the difference between a week that costs you something and a week that just moves through you.
Pleasure as a source of energy isn't a luxury for when things are going well. It's the infrastructure. It's what makes everything else possible without the slow erosion underneath.
That's available to you too.
Its not a reward for getting everything right. Not once things calm down. Now, exactly as things are, inside the mess and the movement and the weeks that ask more than they give back.
The entry point isn't a retreat or a morning routine or a new supplement stack.
It's getting curious about whether you are actually inside your life or just running it.
P.S If this resonated, this is the work I go deep into inside my The Claimed Code. You can join the waitlist here, or book a 1:1 coaching session if you'd prefer somewhere more private to begin.
