July Productivity Rebellion: How To Share The Mental Load This Summer
This is The Productivity Rebellion.
Once a month, I send you an email designed to feel like settling in with your favorite magazine — something you tuck into with your coffee on a Sunday morning. Real stories, deep thinking, and permission to do things differently. One focused topic. No overwhelm.
Key Takeaways
A packed June is a choice — before you say yes to anything new this month, find the empty space in your calendar and protect it first.
You can't squeeze more good thinking, more creativity, or more patience out of a schedule already packed to the edges. White space isn't wasted time — it's where you recharge.
Protecting white space means auditing your existing yes's, not just guarding against new ones — find one obligation on your June calendar and cancel or reschedule it.
Table of Contents
Here we are mid-summer, with full calendars, sticky popsicle messes and endless sprinkler days.
I was having coffee with a friend the other day, and we talked about how summer never seems to be as relaxing as we hoped it would be when we were looking forward to it just a few short months ago.
We wanted the relief of no school drop offs, less work and more play. But we substituted the grind of school days and sports seasons with coordinating summer camps, vacations, and the Herculean amount of tasks that go into magically making all that happen for our families.
We recently got back from an 8-day road trip through the American Wild West, culminating in seeing Mount Rushmore. Incredible doesn’t begin to do it justice. Before we left, I did a giant brain dump on paper, in sharpie, for my family. One page for things that needed to happen in the days leading up to the trip, one page for the night before, and one page for the morning of. (I’ve done this for more than one trip now, which means it needs to be a template.)
It’s all visible, all out on the kitchen island, and everyone knows exactly what needs to be done.
I’m not keeping the list in my head, or silently seething over carrying the mental load for the trip, how running myself ragged trying to get it all done on my own.
My family is not psychic and they are happy to help when they know what needs to happen. I just have to tell them. And before you say “you shouldn’t have to tell them, that adds more load”, 1) that doesn’t apply to kids, and 2) that definitely applies to some circumstances of daily life with my hubby, but not something like this. Don’t ‘@’ me, I stand by it. ;)
This Month: Get It All Out Of Your Head
Here's what I want you to try for the rest of summer: stop being the only person in your house who knows what's happening next. Write it down somewhere everyone can see it, and let go of carrying it alone.
Most of us think keeping the plan in our head is faster than writing it down and explaining it to everyone else. It is not. It's just slower in a way that doesn't show up until week six of summer, when you're short-tempered over a missing swim towel and nobody understands why, because nobody but you knew the swim towel mattered today.
The mental load is being the only one who's tracking everything, which means you're never off duty, even during the parts of summer that are supposed to feel like a break.
Practically, here's what getting it out of your head looks like for the rest of summer:
Pick one thing coming up that has more than three moving parts — a trip, a camp transition, a visit from family — and write it out on paper, not in a note buried six folders deep on your phone.
Put it somewhere your people will actually walk past it: the kitchen counter, the fridge, the mirror by the front door.
Tell them it exists. Not as a guilt trip, just as information: "this is what's happening and when, so you don't have to ask me."
Let someone else own at least one piece of it completely, even if they do it differently than you would (towels folded wrong, snacks not organized by color, whatever — let it go).
Your tiny rebellion this month: pick the next thing on your calendar with any logistics attached to it, and get it out of your head and onto paper before the week it happens, not the night before.
Behind the Chaos: Pivot! Pivot!
One of the many hard lessons I’ve learned over the years is around knowing when to cut bait when it comes to a service provider or client not being a good fit. My tendency is to second-guess myself and hang on way too long.
Unfortunately, that’s the position I found myself in with my cover designer. It was clear it wasn’t a good fit for several reasons and I had to make the choice to stop working with her right before that road trip I mentioned. Midstream in all the editing and proofreading and planning, I had to stop everything.
I’m in the process of hiring a new designer and all the other pieces are moving along thanks to my writing mentor and editor.
If you’ve ever stayed with the wrong choice because you didn’t want to stop the momentum (oh that can apply to so many areas of life), then you know that nail biting feeling.
Ultimately, I knew that I couldn’t sacrifice the potential success of my book because I hung on to a bad fit designer to not lose momentum. It was the only right choice.
If This Resonated
I’ve started a monthly series on my blog called Monthly Reset Series: Slow Living for Women Entrepreneurs.
Each month, we tackle one aspect of building a business without burning out. No hustle. No overwhelm. Just sustainable momentum that you can rely on when life gets chaotic and schedules change throughout the year. You can find each month’s published issue here.
It’ll publish on the first of each month, just like the Productivity Rebellion, with ideas and inspiration you can use to mindfully build a more intentional life and business (think more tactical and how-to’s, specific to the month).
On The Podcast:
The Social Media Burnout Cure Is Coming — See You in October
I'm pausing the podcast (temporarily). After 10 years running a digital marketing agency, managing social media for Megadeth, and a decade as a Special Agent before that, I've written the book I've been circling around for years — and to launch it well, I'm clearing space.
In this short update episode, I'm sharing what's happening with Ditch the Chaos for the next few months, why I'm choosing to walk the walk on the boundary advice I give every week, and exactly how you can stay close while I'm heads-down on this launch.
On The Blog:
How to Do a Brain Dump to Beat Overwhelm and Take Action
Do you ever feel like there are so many ideas, tasks, and worries swirling around in your head that you can’t focus? There are half-done projects and to-do’s piling up, your home feels chaotic, and the idea of getting started is so exhausting you fall into a doom-scroll constantly.
That’s what we loosely call “overwhelm”, and it’s a common struggle — but it’s so much more than that. It’s not just a long to-do list — it’s often a severe mental load that’s compounded by digital and mental clutter.
It’s when you open the fridge and see the sticky mess a bottle of dressing made, but you don’t have time to clean it…
…or when you open your email and see the family photos download but haven’t ordered the Christmas card yet…
…or when you’re searching for a client file so you can finish a big project, but realize your Google Drive is hopelessly cluttered and it will take hours to clean up.
When there’s too much happening in your mind that crosses your field of vision or mental to-do list, even the simplest decisions can feel exhausting. This is where a brain dump comes in—a tool that can help you declutter your thoughts and open loops, get clear on priorities, and start taking meaningful action.
In this blog, you’ll learn exactly how to do a brain dump effectively to get out of overwhelm, get unstuck, and set yourself up for success.
That’s it for July my friends. I hope this month gives you something you’ve been quietly needing: room to breathe, a little excitement about what’s growing behind the scenes, and how to get all the things out of your head so you're not the only one carrying it.
I hope you got a little joy, compassion, and feeling of being seen from this month’s issue.
See you next month!
Here's to creating white space in your calendar and breathing room in your brain
xo,
Cara
Ready to build a weekly planning system flexible enough to survive summer, swim lessons, and every Tuesday that falls apart? Chaos Detox teaches you the exact method I use to plan my weeks in under 60 minutes—with enough structure to keep moving and enough flexibility to handle real life when it shows up. Learn more about Chaos Detox here.
👉Looking for practical tasks you can do in your business that flow with seasonal energy? Read: How to Align Your Business with Seasonal Planning to Prevent Burnout
Need More Help Running Your Business This Summer?
If you're looking for more than a planning framework — if the overwhelm runs deeper than your schedule — coaching might be what's missing. Depending on where you're stuck, here's where to go next:
Burnout Coaching | Time Management Coaching | Business Coaching
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Hey, I'm Cara ChaceA time management and burnout coach for women entrepreneurs. I blend practical tools with mindset work so you can stay organized, protect your energy, and actually enjoy your business again — without rigid routines or pushing harder.
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The July Productivity Rebellion is here — and this month we're talking mental load: what it costs to be the only one tracking everything, and how to start sharing the plan before summer runs out.