My dumbbells had been living under my desk.
I use them several times a week as part of my strength training, so this was hardly an ideal arrangement. Meanwhile, the credenza in my office was filled with carefully preserved examples of work I had created more than a decade ago, when I was pursuing consulting assignments with medical-device companies.
That work was precious to me. It represented expertise I had earned, clients I had served, and a professional identity I had built over many years.
But it no longer deserved the most valuable storage space in my office. Recently, I cleared filing space elsewhere and moved those materials—still intact, but no longer occupying prime real estate.
My dumbbells now fit neatly inside the credenza. It was a modest change. Yet every time I open that cabinet, it feels like a declaration:
This is part of the life I am living now. This belongs in what comes next.
When Our Surroundings Lag Behind Our Lives
I had confronted a similar mismatch in 2016. I had just published the first edition of my book and completed a major branding overhaul. I had a new logo, a new visual identity, and boxes of new stationery, business cards, and notepaper. Unfortunately, all of those new materials were stashed beneath my credenza because the office still held voluminous files from my previous consulting work.
I had been trying to layer a new professional identity on top of everything that supported the old one, without editing what had come before. Before my new identity could have a proper home, I needed to decide which earlier materials still deserved space. Many old files from my consulting years gradually found their way to the recycling bin, creating room for the work I was moving toward.
Apparently, every emerging identity eventually makes a claim on the storage system. But this is about more than office organization. I am increasingly aware of the connection between how we use our physical space and how we allocate our other finite resources: time, money, energy, and attention.
What receives those resources reveals what we have prioritized—sometimes intentionally and sometimes simply because we have never reconsidered the arrangement.
The arrangement of our lives can continue long after the assumptions behind it have expired.
Tension Is Information
Something felt out of kilter each time I had to retrieve the dumbbells stacked awkwardly beneath my desk. Mhy dumbbells represent something I value and use regularly. Yet they had no proper place. Meanwhile, examples of work from 2011 occupied convenient, prominent space because that was where they had always been.
That small irritation was telling me something. Tension often builds when the way we allocate our resources no longer reflects what matters to us now.
The work that once energized us may consume nearly all our energy. Obligations inherited from an earlier season may continue to fill the calendar. Possessions associated with an old identity may occupy our physical space. New interests may be treated as optional, while familiar responsibilities receive automatic priority.
We may say that something matters, but the way we arrange our lives tells a different story. This tension does not necessarily mean that something has gone terribly wrong. It may mean that an arrangement that once served us no longer fits. Something is out of proportion. Something that belongs in the future does not yet have room.
Your Next Chapter Cannot Simply Be Added
As accomplished leaders begin contemplating what comes next, many focus on what they might add: another executive position, consulting, entrepreneurship, board service, teaching, writing, purpose-driven work, travel, or a more spacious way of living. But a next chapter cannot always be added on top of everything that already occupies our lives. Our resources are finite.
To make room for something new, we may need to reconsider what has been receiving those resources until now. That does not require rejecting everything we have built. Our previous work, identities, relationships, and commitments may remain deeply valuable. But value alone does not determine how much prominence something should continue to have.
The portfolio pieces in my credenza still mattered to me. Moving them did not erase the work or diminish its importance. It simply changed how much prime physical space these examples from an earlier chapter occupied in the life I am living now. Releasing something does not always mean discarding it. Sometimes it means changing the amount of space, time, energy, money, attention, or authority it occupies.
What Deserves Prime Real Estate Now?
In my Your Next Chapter writing, I have been exploring four ways to reconsider the pieces of our lives: KEEP. ENLARGE. ADD. RELEASE.
KEEP asks what continues to provide meaning, joy, connection, contribution, or security. Keeping something can be an intentional decision rather than the absence of change.
ENLARGE asks what already belongs in our lives but deserves more room. It may be time with people we love, attention to our health, creative work, learning, travel, service, rest, or an idea that has been waiting patiently at the edge of the calendar.
ADD asks what new possibility needs an initial allocation of resources. We may not yet know whether it belongs permanently. We can give it enough space to explore it.
RELEASE asks what no longer deserves its current share of our resources.
Release can mean eliminating something, but it can also mean reducing, relocating, delegating, completing, or renegotiating it. We can honor what something has meant without allowing it to dominate what comes next. The question is not simply, “Does this still have value?” A more discerning question is: Does this deserve prime real estate in my life now?
Experiment Before You Rearrange Everything
Moving my portfolio pieces and giving my dumbbells a proper home was a small experiment in personal agency. I did not reorganize my entire office or formulate a comprehensive plan for the rest of my life. I noticed one area of tension and changed one allocation. Then I paid attention to the result.
The sense of accomplishment was out of proportion to the size of the task. That small change made the office feel more congruent with the life I am living now and the future I want to support.
It became my first tangible declaration that strength and health belong in my next chapter. Small experiments can help us create that kind of evidence.
Protecting one afternoon from work can teach us how we respond to greater spaciousness.
Trying an advisory role can help us distinguish between enjoying the work and enjoying being valued for our expertise.
Making time to write, teach, mentor, create, travel, or reconnect with friends can reveal what gives us energy—and what we have missed.
An experiment does not require us to commit to a permanent destination. It gives us an opportunity to try, notice, and adjust. Planning attempts to predict what will fit. Experimenting allows us to discover it.
Making Space Is an Act of Agency
In my previous article, Authority Is Not the Same as Agency: You Count, Too, I distinguished between the authority we accumulate and the agency we exercise. Authority is the expertise, judgment, credibility, relationships, and influence we have earned. Agency is deciding what we want to do with it.
But agency is not expressed only through large career decisions. It is also exercised through the everyday allocation of our finite resources.
What will receive our best time?
What deserves our energy?
What will occupy our physical surroundings?
What possibilities will receive enough attention to take shape?
What from an earlier chapter will remain valuable without continuing to occupy the center?
Each choice helps determine not only what we will do next, but how we will live.
The Right People in the Room
These questions can be difficult to explore alone. We are often too close to our own obligations, assumptions, and established identities to recognize what is occupying more space than it deserves, or what has been waiting quietly for room.
I am developing a small, carefully curated group experience for accomplished women who are ready to explore what belongs in their next chapter.
Together, we will consider what to KEEP, ENLARGE, ADD, and RELEASE. We will create thoughtful, real-life experiments that help us reallocate our resources toward what matters now.
This will not be about discarding everything we have built or forcing a dramatic reinvention. It will be about reclaiming authorship of our lives, one intentional allocation at a time.
If this is the kind of conversation you have been longing for, I invite you to message me privately.
Your next chapter needs room. Sometimes it also needs the right people in the room with you.
