The experiment that didn't hold
Ben tried working 10% less for 6 months. It didn't work, and not because he lacked discipline. He was solving the wrong problem. Ben is a college administrator, and the kind of leader every campus is lucky to have, giving his best energy to everyone else's success: the students who need one more conversation, the staff member who needs a door opened, the colleague who needs a second set of eyes on a proposal due tomorrow.
Then the exhaustion arrived, the slow kind you don’t notice until it's already settled in. The obvious fix was to do less. So he made a plan: pull back 10%, protect his calendar, say no a little more often, and he held to it, more or less, for half a year.
Why doing less backfired
It didn't hold, because pulling back runs against who Ben is. Generous people don’t become less generous by decree. This is the trap I see most often with leaders in higher education and nonprofits. Their generosity isn’t a habit they picked up. It's central to their identity, and often the very reason they chose this work.
So when the prescription is "give less," two things happen. First, the plan quietly erodes: one exception becomes five, and the 10% drifts back. Second, and more costly, every boundary they do hold feels like a small betrayal of themselves. They end up just as tired, plus a little guilty. Subtraction treats generosity as the problem.
Generosity never was the problem.
The reframe: less subtraction, more deposit
Here's the reframe I offered Ben. The goal isn’t 10% less work. It's 10% more investment in himself. Think of it as an account. Subtraction tries to slow withdrawals, asking a generous person like Ben to fight his own nature every day, while a deposit works with his nature.
Deposits ask a different question: what actually refills you?
The shift sounds small, but it changes the whole experience. A boundary feels like loss. A deposit feels like something you get to look forward to. One depends on willpower; the other builds momentum on its own. You don’t need to invent an answer, and neither did Ben. He signed up to mentor two people through an emerging leaders program, and he felt the joy immediately. Same generosity, same energy going outward, but it gave back instead of draining him.
That joy matters. The fix isn’t to stop giving. It’s to notice which kinds of giving refill you, and to treat that as a priority rather than an extra. The data on what feeds you has likely been there all along, but you may never have been the person you were collecting it for.
Finding your own 10%
If you recognize yourself in Ben, start by collecting your own data. Try this over the next two weeks.
Notice the lift. At the end of each day, jot down one moment you left with more energy than you brought. Don’t judge it; just record it.
Look for the pattern. After two weeks, read the list. What do those moments share? A certain kind of conversation, a type of problem, a particular person, a way of working?
Make one deposit on purpose. Choose a single item from that pattern and schedule more of it. Put it on the calendar and protect it like you would a meeting with your president or board chair.
Keep the giving that gives back. Some generosity drains you, and some feeds you. You don’t have to cut the second kind. You may need more of it.
10% is a useful size. It's big enough to feel, and small enough that nobody else's success suffers for it. Generous leaders don’t need to become less generous.
Generous leaders need to include themselves in the circle of people they invest in.
So here's my question for you: Where could you add 10% for yourself, instead of subtracting 10% from everyone else?
