You can put 'booked and busy' in the bin.

Sure, 'booked and busy' sounds cool when it’s stitched onto a dad cap or printed across a tote bag. It’s become the tag line of ambition - an aesthetic, a lifestyle, a badge of honour. But if I’m being honest? Running around fully booked without a break sounds less like success and more like a fast-track to burnout.

Lately, I’ve been deep in it. Back-to-back events, big client projects, the wrap of our 2025 Best in Skin Awards, and a personal branding course about to launch. Throw in a milestone birthday (35!) and you’ve got yourself a fortnight of champagne, spreadsheets, and very little stillness.

And it got me thinking.

‘Busy’ isn’t neutral. It comes with a whole lot of baggage. Hustle culture. Guilt for not doing more. The kind of toxic positivity that tells us to be grateful for the chaos. Somewhere along the way, “being busy” became slang for being important. And yet… we’re losing something in the noise.

So, as someone who just celebrated another lap around the sun and had a little clarity moment, here’s my hot take:

Don’t postpone the being for the building.

It’s something I’ve had to remind myself of more than once lately. When you’re deep in the doing (sending the emails, writing the strategy, showing up for clients, crossing the to-do list off with urgent precision) it’s easy to forget that you are part of the work too.

Your ideas. Your vision. Your energy.

They’re not just fuel for the next project. They are the project.

And so many of us (especially in this industry) wear “busy” like a badge of honour, don’t we? We say yes to the opportunities, fill our calendars, chase momentum. But sometimes, if we’re honest, we do it at the cost of presence. We blur the lines between momentum and meaning. We think we’re building a brand or a business, but what we’re really doing is bulldozing through the parts that matter most—connection, creativity, and self (you'll especially feel this if you have kids).

Here’s what I’m trying to do differently now that I'm 35: Pause more often. Say no to the fluff. Create space between the moments so the magic can actually land. Hold the boundary that says I can be ambitious without abandoning myself.

So if you’re also riding that fine line between building and being, I see you. And I hope you give yourself permission to anchor into the now, even while you're planning the next.

Because the truth is—you don’t have to be less ambitious to be more present. You just have to choose presence as part of the ambition.