Don't suffer in silence

A former line manager once told me that there is always a higher mountain to climb. When you think you have reached the top, that’s when you see the next one in front of you.

I think about that quite often. There is always another project that needs attention, another deadline approaching, another presentation that could be improved. Finishing one thing rarely creates the sense of completion we expect. Usually it simply reveals what comes next.

That can be motivating, but it can also become exhausting. The danger is not the next mountain. It is pretending that the climb feels easy when it does not.

This is something I now tell the people I work with: do not suffer in silence. Speak before the pressure becomes too much. Ask for help before exhaustion starts to look like commitment.

Work will keep bringing up new higher mountains. That is unlikely to change. What we can change is whether we climb them alone.