Your brain is one big overworked muscle

I trained for an Ironman in Germany earlier this year.

My coach gave me a training plan every week. 3–4 hour bike rides, long runs along a local Irish canal, and swims in a 50 metre pool that left my shoulders screaming.

The swim, cycling, and run workouts were hard.

But these workouts alone didn’t get me race-fit.

My coach also scheduled rest days and down weeks, because that’s when my body absorbed the training.

Muscles don’t grow during the workout. They rebuild in the white space after, when a triathlete is sitting on the couch feeling spent.

What’s more, these down days, gave me time to mentally reset before the next leg up.

Burnt-out creators treat their business like they’re overtraining.

They wake up, bash out content, answer emails, hop on client calls, squeeze in “networking,” doom scroll LinkedIn or X for “research,”.

They collapse, wondering why they find content creation so hard.

Your best ideas are like muscle tissue.

They need white space to grow.

When I quit the corporate racket and started hiring assistants, I wasn’t buying time to work more. I was buying white space to tinker.

That white space gave me room to write a book. To create courses. To train for an actual Ironman while building my newsletter business.

But most creators would rather give blisters from spinning on the content hamster wheel than schedule a single day of creative rest.

You can’t think your way to your next breakthrough if you keep going and going and going.

You need to stop moving long enough for the idea to catch up to you.

Step back today and you can leap forward tomorrow.

If you’re ready to build white space into your calendar instead of filling every gap with busywork, reply “IRONMAN” and I’ll send you my exact weekly structure that balances creation with rest.