Someone once told me to "deflate some balloons."
I was at a point in my career where I had my fingers in everything. Running a dev team. Mentoring two junior engineers. Leading a cross-functional initiative. Volunteering for the company culture committee. Writing internal documentation nobody asked for. And somehow still trying to ship code myself.
I was proud of it, too. Look at all these balloons I'm holding. Look how high they float.
Then a colleague I respected pulled me aside and said something I didn't want to hear: "You're holding too many balloons, Ken. Some of them need to go."
I smiled, nodded, and completely ignored the advice. For about six months.
The Addiction to Yes
Here's the thing about saying yes to everything: it feels productive. Every new commitment is a rush. Another balloon in your hand. Another string wrapped around your wrist. You feel important. Needed. Indispensable.
But you're not building anything. You're collecting obligations.
I've watched leaders do this for decades. The ambitious ones are the worst offenders. They take on projects, committees, mentoring roles, speaking slots, and side initiatives until their calendar looks like a game of Tetris played by someone having a panic attack.
Research from Microsoft's Work Trend Index found more than 53% of managers report feeling burned out. Not employees in general. Managers. The people who are supposed to be holding it all together.
Gallup found 40% of managers feel their priorities compete with each other. And managers are 50% more likely than their employees to agree they have too much on their plate.
Those numbers don't surprise me. I lived them.
What Happens When You Hold Too Many
When you grip every balloon, you lose the ability to steer any of them.
I learned this the hard way. The cross-functional initiative I was leading? It delivered mediocre results because I split my attention across four other commitments. The mentoring I was doing? Surface-level at best, because I squeezed sessions into 15-minute gaps between meetings. The code I was still writing? Full of bugs because my brain was already in the next meeting before I finished the current function.
DDI's Global Leadership Forecast found nearly 60% of leaders reported feeling "used up" at the end of the workday. A Deloitte survey revealed approximately 70% of high-level executives have considered quitting to protect their emotional well-being.
The instinct is to blame workload. But workload is a symptom. The disease is the inability to choose.
The Art of Choosing Which Balloons to Release
Ruth Wooderson, a leader I admire, frames this beautifully: deflate some balloons. Not pop them. Not throw them at someone else. Deflate them. Gently. Intentionally.
The distinction matters. Popping a balloon is dramatic. It draws attention. People flinch. Deflating one is quiet. You let the air out slowly. The commitment shrinks. It lands softly.
Here's what deflating looks like in practice:
Say it out loud. London Business School researchers recommend being transparent about trade-offs. When you decline an invitation or step back from a commitment, say so openly. "I'm stepping away from this initiative because I need to give my full attention to the project where I'll have the most impact." No vague excuses. No ghosting the calendar invite.
Ask the kill question. Before approving any new initiative, force a gut check: "If we had to stop one thing to make room for this, what would it be?" If nobody has an answer, you're adding work, not strategy.
Model it visibly. When you leave at a reasonable hour, take your full holiday, or block time for rest, you give permission to everyone around you. This isn't weakness. It's leadership.
My Own Balloon-Deflating Moments
After those six months of ignoring my colleague's advice, my body made the decision for me. I got sick. Not dramatically sick. Persistently, annoyingly, won't-go-away sick. The kind of sick where your immune system sends you a memo: "We tried telling you nicely."
So I started deflating.
I stepped off the culture committee. Nobody noticed. The committee continued without a single hiccup. All those meetings I'd attended, all those contributions I'd made... the machine ran fine without me.
I stopped writing code myself and focused on unblocking the team. Our velocity went up. Turns out, a leader who removes obstacles is worth more than a leader who writes mediocre functions between meetings.
I trimmed my mentoring from five people to two. And the mentoring got dramatically better. I knew what those two people were working on. I remembered their goals between sessions. I gave them my full attention instead of a distracted version of it.
The hardest one: I said no to a high-profile project. A visible, resume-building, career-advancing opportunity. I said no because I knew I'd do a B-minus job on it. And B-minus work from an overcommitted leader helps nobody.
Fewer Balloons, Higher Flight
The counterintuitive truth about letting go is this: the remaining balloons float higher.
When you hold three commitments instead of twelve, each one gets your full energy. Your work improves. Your thinking sharpens. You show up to meetings prepared instead of winging it. You respond to messages within hours instead of days.
My research into bad boss behaviours at Step It Up HR keeps confirming this pattern. Leaders who spread themselves too thin become the distracted, unavailable bosses their teams resent. The ones who focus... those are the bosses people remember fondly at the dinner table.
As Zach Mercurio puts it: your real KPI is what people say about you at their dinner table. They're not discussing your project portfolio or your committee memberships. They're talking about how you made them feel.
Nobody ever said, "My boss was amazing because they were on seven committees and always looked exhausted."
The Question Worth Sitting With
If you're reading this with a creeping sense of recognition... good. Sit with it.
Look at your calendar for the next month. Count the balloons. Now ask yourself: which three matter most? Not which three are most urgent. Not which three will make you look busiest. Which three will have the most meaningful impact on the people and work you care about?
The rest? Deflate them. Gently. Intentionally. And notice how much higher the remaining ones fly.