I didn’t get to kiss the hippo 🦛…

July 19, 2026

This week I was in London delivering a two-day, in-person Intentional Careers™ Accelerator.

It’s the first time I’ve brought together everything in one programme; not just an overview of Intentional Careers or a deep dive into LinkedIn, but the complete process of deciding what’s next and creating the strategy to make it happen.

(You can catch my 42s LinkedIn reel here 👀)

Because I travel for work quite a bit, I try to minimise the number of nights away from home.

That often means very early starts.

I’m used to getting up early for swim training, but combine that with delivering a full day of coaching and, by 6pm, I was running on empty.

I found myself wandering around Bloomsbury trying to decide what to eat.

I walked around the same block twice and still couldn’t make a decision.

Eventually I told myself, Whatever is on the next corner, that’s where I’m eating.

So, as I passed kiss the hippo coffee shop (noting it for the morning and yes, it was great coffee and to my disappointment there was no hippo to kiss 🤷‍♀️) I walked into a whole foods restaurant with my book and it was just perfect.

But it struck me afterwards…

It wasn’t that I had no energy left. I had no capacity left to make another decision.
After a good night’s sleep, my capacity returned and so did my ability to think clearly.

One question

What are you running low on right now…
Energy or capacity?

One insight

We often treat them as though they’re the same thing.

They’re not.

Energy is about fuel.
You can expend it doing things. You can create it by doing things that give you energy. You can replenish it by meeting your needs.

Capacity is about headspace.
You can have plenty of energy but no capacity for one more request, one more decision, or one more problem to solve.

I notice this before I travel.

There’s a lot to organise and many different moving pieces.

Then school sends a message:
“Please bring in an empty bottle tomorrow.”

It’s tiny.

Objectively, it’s no big deal.

Yet in that moment it feels completely overwhelming, because there’s simply no capacity left.

One action

This week, notice when you say:

“I just can’t deal with that right now.”

Pause before assuming you’re tired.

Ask yourself:

Is this an energy problem… or a capacity problem?

The answer might change what you need.

Keep opening up,
Hannah

PS. If you don’t have capacity to think about what’s next in your career and it always gets pushed aside for something more urgent and important, that capacity challenge doesn’t resolve itself, it compounds.

Whatsapp me the word CAREER to get on the priority notification list for the September cohort of the Intentional Careers 6-week Accelerator.

We will unlock your capacity before you begin so that you have time to work on your career, not just in it, and future-proof it forever.
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