The Cost of Always Being 'On' and why doing less feels wrong.
The Emma Guns Show
Emma Gunavardhana
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do you immediately assume that doing less equates to being lazy? More than that, do you feel that if you aren't constantly 'on' that the world will assume you aren't a motivated, successful, go-getter?
Over the last few weeks, I've been a guinea-pig in my own 'what's the worst that can happen if I do less?' experiment and the results, so far, have been surprising. Not least because, truth be told, I have created an identity around going above and beyond, over-delivering and always being poised to pounce on the next idea that to make the decision to absent myself from that sense of urgency has been, dare I say, uncomfortable and unsettling.
Whether a down-shift in perceived effort is a good thing is something only time will tell, but nearly a month into this effort, I can definitely tell you what it feels like to consciously 'do' less and how that has been showing up.
It hasn't been particularly comfortable and, as someone who has also responded to my internal Sergeant Major immediately, to suddenly tell that loud, shouty inner voice 'not today' or 'not right now' has led to a fair amount of low level guilt.
Doing less has felt like choosing laziness.
However, doing less via conscious choice as opposed to apathy has changed the texture of my days - even this soon into the experiment. I'm practising this new, slower approach across work, nutrition and training and my one observation across all three is that I feel far more connected to all my tasks and less knee-jerk and reactive. More on this in the episode.
My main takeaway is that this reframe means I'm no longer living in a state of low-grade urgency and the knock-on effects of that have been pleasing so far...
Have a listen and let me know what you think of this experiment, whether you're trying it alongside me or whether this has made you look at your workload differently. Let's chat in the comments over on Substack...
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, hi and welcome to another episode of the Emma Gunn Show and another report, if you like, from inside what it is like to be doing less. |
| 0:18.0 | This is what we're going to be talking about in the first half of this |
| 0:20.9 | episode, because if you've been here for a few weeks, well, if you've been here for a long time, |
| 0:25.1 | hi, but you will know that I am testing out something that essentially looks like doing less, |
| 0:33.1 | looks like tapping out. In fact, when I was thinking about all of the vocabulary that I could |
| 0:37.9 | use to describe what I was doing, all of it sounded quite, well, not the kind of vocabulary that one |
| 0:46.1 | wants to be seen using when it comes to effort, because all of it sounded a little bit lazy. |
| 0:51.9 | It sounded a little bit like choosing the path of least |
| 0:56.2 | resistance in a negative way. It just sounded a bit feckless. And so that is part of the bigger |
| 1:04.5 | conversation. But I have been talking about the idea of doing less, but in the sense of working smarter, not harder, |
| 1:17.7 | because I think, and I speak to many of you on DM on an email and in the substack comments, |
| 1:23.4 | I know that we probably all would say that emotionally, physically, mentally we are all oversubscribed to our own stuff, to other people's stuff, to work stuff, to, we are just constantly at the will of something else. |
| 1:37.8 | There is something else going on that takes up quite a lot of our time, attention, effort, energy, emotional band, with all of those |
| 1:46.3 | sorts of things. And so since I would say December was when I had my big revelation of, well, |
| 1:54.0 | what I'm doing now isn't getting me anywhere and hasn't been getting me anywhere. And my natural default sort of strategy would be to |
| 2:05.3 | double or nothing. But I also realized that I didn't really have that in the tank, maybe because I |
| 2:11.2 | chose to do that towards the end of the year. But also that can't be my long term strategy as a woman |
| 2:16.1 | who was just about to turn 48 at the time. I think I was very mindful of time and of my age and of the things that are available to me and the things that are no longer available to me in terms of kind of like the energy. You know, I am somebody who likes to be in bed by nine, ten at the latest, which means that being that kind of person who used to stay up till 3 a.m. |
| 2:36.1 | working, that's just not who I am anymore. |
| 2:38.4 | So the idea that I can fill the hours that I am currently working with the same amount of effort |
| 2:44.5 | that I used to when I would stay up all hours of the night, it just doesn't make any sense. |
| 2:49.5 | So I thought, right, something has to give. And the best way to say it is doing less, but it is really, is about being smarter in the way that you work. So this is more of a report from the inside. This is not a lesson. I'm not trying to convince you that you have to do less. I'm also at this very early stage, I'm not telling you that doing less is good, but what I do |
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