Happiness has been a bit thin on the ground these days. The headlines are grim, loneliness and disconnection are rising, and work pressures seem to multiply by the day as new technologies, global unrest, and social upheaval collide.
In the midst of…
I’m obsessive about my to-do lists. Everything I need to get done goes on my list so I don’t lose sight of it.
But as a solo business owner, I ran into a problem: when do I have the time to actually work through my list? Anything urgent, I’d work on. Anything non-urgent, well…
Stuff that keeps a business running gets perpetually pushed to “later.” However, “later” can eventually cause problems – like your website is out of date, your files are a mess, or your inbox is chaos. You can’t ignore the small, boring, non-billable tasks, or they’ll compound.
Why you need a dedicated admin hour
The default solopreneur mode is often reactive. You deal with admin tasks only when they start causing you or your business some pain.
If you set aside a recurring block of time on your calendar, it turns admin tasks into routine maintenance instead of a crisis response. I use Friday mornings. Some weeks it’s 30 minutes; other weeks it’s longer. The point is that I protect that time and stick to it every week.
An admin hour also creates a psychological boundary. Client work has its time, and your business should also get some attention. When you know admin time has a designated slot, you won’t feel the constant pressure of an unfinished to-do list.
What to do during your admin hour
The specifics will depend on your business, but here are the tasks I cycle through most often during my admin hour.
Review your pipeline. Look at what’s coming in, what’s wrapping up, and if you have an upcoming gap in your income. If a prospect went quiet, send a short check-in. Scope out potential clients if you need to drum up new business.
Update your portfolio or website. Add recent projects and remove anything outdated. Refresh your service descriptions since your website is often the first thing a potential client sees.
Review and organize files and folders. Archive completed projects, save any invoices to your Google Drive, and make sure nothing has been overlooked in your Downloads folder. This is the kind of task that feels pointless until you’re scrambling to find something three months from now.
Check in on your finances. Categorize recent expenses, review what you’ve earned this month, and send invoices. If a client’s payment is overdue, send a follow-up.
Tame your inbox. Reply to the emails that have been waiting for a response from you. Archive what you no longer need. Move anything that requires deeper work to your to-do list.
Update your internal processes. Tweak your proposal language based on recent experiences. Audit the tools and subscriptions you’re paying for. Record a quick video of yourself walking through a process so you remember how to do it later.
The admin hour that runs itself?
Over time, I’ve learned not to think of my admin hour as a chore. I put on some music and power through my list.
And some of these tasks — organizing files, triaging your inbox — are increasingly things that AI tools can handle in the background. Quite a few tasks that used to be on my weekly list have now been “outsourced” because they don’t require any human judgment. Just detailed instructions.
Over time, you might find that AI can handle the boring stuff and you can focus your admin hour on higher-value work, like refining your positioning or deciding where your business goes next.
Fifteen years after his passing, Steve Jobs’s thoughts on innovation, entrepreneurship, design, and leadership still make a meaningful impact. Since there’s a Jobs quote for many situations, winnowing it down to five isn’t an easy task.
Still: Here…
Most organizations genuinely want to support their people. We invest in wellness apps, coaching programs, and leadership development, all with good intentions. Yet burnout rates keep climbing. Aflac’s WorkForces Report from November 2024 referenced that burnout affected nearly 3 in 5 American workers with employees experiencing high levels of stress rising to 38% in 2024, up from 33% in 2023. The issue isn’t effort or resources. It may simply be that we’re solving for the wrong problem.
I recently sat down with Natallia Miranchuk, founder of SOULA, an AI-powered emotional support platform that combines neuroscience, health expertise, and artificial intelligence to address workplace wellbeing. While her research has focused primarily on women, the insights she shared have implications for how we support all high performers—regardless of gender.
SOULA recently completed a pilot program with InDrive, a global unicorn with over 2,000 employees. The results were remarkable: 67% sustained engagement among participants—compared to the industry standard of just 3% for wellness apps like Calm or Headspace. Participants returned to the platform four to six times weekly for what Miranchuk calls “self-reflection therapy”—brief, 10-minute sessions that don’t require scheduling a therapist or waiting for a weekly coaching call.
What the data says
Here’s what the data revealed—insights that can reshape how any leader thinks about sustaining high performance.
Care before you push.
Many workplace wellness approaches emphasize optimization: go further, achieve more, level up. These aren’t bad instincts—ambition matters. But Miranchuk’s research suggests that sustainable performance starts somewhere different. “When a person feels genuinely cared for,” she told me, “they can do whatever they want.” This isn’t soft thinking—it’s neuroscience. Feeling psychologically safe and supported activates the neural pathways that enable creativity, risk-taking, and resilience. Leaders who model care aren’t coddling their teams; they’re creating the conditions for sustained excellence.
Support works best in the moment.
The InDrive pilot’s most surprising finding wasn’t just the engagement rate—it was when people sought support. They didn’t wait for scheduled therapy sessions or monthly check-ins. They needed emotional processing in real time, multiple times throughout the week. This challenges the conventional model of periodic wellness interventions. Just as we’ve learned that feedback works best when it’s timely, emotional support may be most effective when it’s available on-hand rather than on-schedule. For leaders, this means creating cultures where checking in isn’t a calendar event—it’s woven into daily rhythms.
Personalization matters more than we thought.
Miranchuk’s work highlights how one-size-fits-all wellness programs often miss the mark. Her research with women revealed that biological cycles, hormonal patterns, and stress responses vary significantly—and generic tools don’t account for these differences. But the broader principle applies to everyone: we all have unique rhythms, energy patterns, and recovery needs. Building what Miranchuk calls “soft resilience”—the capacity to sustain performance over time—requires self-awareness about our individual cycles and designing routines that prevent burnout rather than treating it after the fact. The best leaders help their people discover what sustainable performance looks like for them specifically.
Authentic care creates community organically.
When the InDrive pilot introduced a simple practice—asking “How are you today?” and genuinely listening for three minutes—something unexpected happened. Participants spontaneously formed support networks outside the program. They started helping each other with childcare, sharing meals, coordinating logistics. Workplace belonging emerged not from team-building exercises but from authentic presence. This is what I call Inside Out work: when leaders model genuine care, it cascades through the organization in ways no program can manufacture.
Ambition is evolving.
Perhaps most intriguingly, Miranchuk has observed senior leaders—particularly women, but increasingly men too—redefining what ambition means to them. They’re not losing drive; they’re seeking impact-oriented work where they can see meaningful outcomes. The old model of climbing for climbing’s sake is giving way to a desire for purpose and visible contribution. Organizations that understand this shift will retain their best talent. Those that don’t may find their most capable people leaving for entrepreneurship, consulting, or social impact ventures where the connection between effort and meaning feels more direct.
Three things you can try this week
First, examine your wellness offerings with fresh eyes. Ask: Are these tools designed for how people actually experience stress and recovery? Or are they productivity tools dressed in wellness language?
Second, model the pause. Before your next team meeting, try opening with “How are you today?”—and actually listen. Three minutes of genuine presence can shift the tenor of an entire team.
Third, expand your metrics. Alongside productivity outputs, start noticing energy sustainability. What practices help your people run longer without burning out? What does sustainable excellence actually look like on your team?
The organizations that will thrive in the coming years won’t necessarily be those with the most sophisticated technology or the most aggressive growth targets. They’ll be the ones that understand a fundamental truth: high performers don’t always need to be pushed harder. Sometimes they need to give themselves permission to breathe—and be trusted to take it from there.
For decades, in the name of workplace equality we’ve encouraged women to enter male-dominated professions because those jobs are better paid, more prestigious, and more powerful. Women engineers. Women in tech. Women in leadership. That agenda still matters but it is not enough.
One of the great blind spots of our time is that we rarely ask the opposite question with equal seriousness: why are we doing so little to bring men into professions dominated by women? We do need many more men in care professions—nursing, teaching, social work, child care, elder care, and support services.
The gender gap we should be talking about is not only women missing from AI jobs. It is men missing from care.
The jobs of the future are already here
Across advanced economies, the occupations facing the most severe labor shortages are often those dominated by women. Nursing, home care, child care, teaching, elder care, disability support and social work are under strain in most countries. Population aging will intensify this dramatically. As societies grow older, the demand for care rises structurally.
Yet when people talk about “the jobs of the future,” the imagination still turns to technology, even as a rising neo-Luddite skepticism questions whether the tech sector will still provide jobs at all.
In reality, the largest recruitment needs are far less futuristic. They are jobs we already know well: nurses, teachers, caregivers, therapists, home aides. Technology may assist them, but it will not replace the human attention, empathy, judgment, and reassurance these professions require.
In other words, many of the most important jobs of tomorrow are those that have long been treated as secondary. And they happen to be overwhelmingly female.
The great asymmetry
Women have spent decades being encouraged to enter male-dominated fields. Governments, companies, and universities have promoted women in STEM, women in leadership, and women in politics. But the reverse movement has barely (if ever) occurred. Men have made very few incursions into what the scholar Richard Reeves calls the HEAL professions—health, education, administration and literacy. While women have increasingly entered STEM fields, men have not moved into HEAL.
The result is a striking asymmetry. Gender equality has largely meant inviting women to enter male professions and adopt male-coded behaviors—assertiveness, competitiveness, authority. The reverse movement—encouraging men to enter female-dominated professions or embrace traditionally “feminine” skills like care and relational attention—has simply never happened. This reinforces an old hierarchy: that “productive” work—historically masculine and industrial—is more valuable than “reproductive” work, meaning care, education, and social support.
Yet this hierarchy makes little sense. Without care, no society can function. Without teachers, nurses, and caregivers, no economy can sustain itself. These professions are not peripheral to prosperity. They are its very foundation.
Why care work remains devalued
Care professions remain underpaid, understaffed, and symbolically undervalued. Part of the reason is historical. Activities associated with nurturing, teaching, maintaining households, and caring for the vulnerable have long been coded as feminine—and therefore taken for granted. But there is also a labor market dynamic at work. Sociologists have observed that when a profession becomes feminized, its relative prestige and wages often decline. Teaching and clerical work are examples of occupations that lost status as women became the majority.
The opposite sometimes happens as well: when men enter a profession in larger numbers, its status can rise. Men working in female-dominated professions often benefit from a glass escalator: they may be promoted faster, perceived as very competent, or steered toward leadership roles. While this dynamic is unjust, it also reveals something important: male presence can change how a profession is perceived. If more men entered care professions, these jobs might gain bargaining power, prestige, and better pay.
The cultural cost of male absence from care
The absence of men from care professions is first and foremost a cultural issue. Boys grow up with very few visible male role models in care. In nurseries, primary schools, hospitals, elder-care homes, and social services, they see women almost exclusively. The message is thus absorbed early: caring professions are not for you, young man.
This matters beyond care work per se because care work fosters skills that modern societies desperately need—empathy, communication, patience, emotional intelligence, cooperation. Their absence in male socialization has lethal consequences.
Discussions about a “crisis of masculinity” often focus on male loneliness, educational decline, online radicalization, or fascination with strongmen. But far less attention is paid to the structural distance many men have from relational work—the kinds of daily interactions that cultivate emotional literacy and social connection. They long for intimacy but lack the language to express it. Emotional expression had been trained out of them.
Care as an antidote to the crisis of masculinity
Across the Western world, public discourse has become increasingly brutal. The celebration of domination, the contempt for vulnerability, and the glorification of force have become visible features of contemporary politics—particularly in movements that frame masculinity in terms of aggression, and resentment. But it is not enough to criticize toxic masculinity. We also need positive models of masculinity rooted in responsibility, empathy, and service.
Care professions offer precisely that. Male nurses, teachers, caregivers, and social workers embody a different form of male authority—one grounded in competence, patience, and protection. They provide boys with visible examples of men who listen, support and accompany others. And they remind us that masculinity does include care.
How to attract more men into care professions
If the absence of men from care is a structural problem, it requires structural solutions.
1. Create visible male role models
Boys rarely see men working in early education, nursing, or social services. Recruitment campaigns and public narratives should highlight male caregivers, teachers, and nurses as respected professionals.
2. Challenge stereotypes early
Career orientation in schools still reflects traditional gender norms. Encouraging boys to consider HEAL professions must begin early, before occupational choices solidify.
3. Improve pay and working conditions
Low wages and difficult working conditions deter workers of all genders. Revaluing care economically is essential to attracting both men and women.
4. Use targeted recruitment campaigns
Governments and training institutions actively recruit women into STEM. Similar initiatives could encourage men to enter nursing, teaching, and care work.
5. Normalize caring masculinities
Media and cultural narratives matter. Representations of men as caregivers—fathers, teachers, nurses, mentors—help redefine what masculinity can look like.
Gender equality should not mean inviting women to abandon care for prestige. It should mean recognizing care as central to society—and ensuring that both women and men participate in it. These jobs are essential. If the future of work is increasingly about sustaining human life—educating children, supporting the vulnerable, caring for the elderly—then the absence of men from these roles is a problem.
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