When everything feels important

By the time Jerry de Waart reached the end of his coaching programme, work had become unusually intense.

One of his clients, Triodos, was moving to a listing on Euronext. Jerry and his colleagues had been involved in preparing the transition, and the launch period created pressure across the organisation. Systems had to work. Orders still had to be processed. Other projects had not disappeared simply because one major deadline had taken over.

“It was a stressful period for most people,” Jerry said. “And if you have other projects running alongside it, at some point you really have to look at what should get priority.”

That situation captured a problem he had been working on for much longer: how to deal with competing demands without carrying all of them at once.

The difficulty was not a lack of effort. Jerry was clearly willing to work. The challenge was deciding where that effort belonged, communicating the consequences of those decisions and accepting that choosing one priority inevitably meant leaving something else unfinished.

In the past, that tension had often remained internal. Tasks, plans and questions would continue to circulate in his mind. During busier periods, that made it harder to distinguish between what was urgent, what was important and what simply happened to be demanding his attention.

Now, he handles those moments more explicitly.

“I can see that I have to do this, this and this,” he explained. “Then someone asks if I can help with something else. That can be completely fine, because it has priority. But then everyone also knows that these other things will remain unfinished.”

It sounds like a small operational change. In practice, it represents a different relationship with pressure: less silent absorption, more conscious negotiation.

The questions beneath the workload

Jerry’s struggle was never only about managing a busy calendar.

Beneath the work sat larger questions about direction. He wanted more clarity about what he was building, how his professional ambitions fitted together and where he wanted to focus his energy over the longer term.

Looking back, he described the most important outcome of the coaching process as gaining “structure, vision and a clear direction.”

“Those were the questions that were floating around,” he said.

The phrase is revealing. Floating questions can be difficult to solve because they are always present but rarely concrete. They influence decisions without being clearly articulated. They create friction, but not always in a form that can be acted on.

For Jerry, progress meant bringing those questions down to earth.

He created timelines. He mapped the steps required for his business plans. He worked on routines, planning and a broader life-design framework. Not every idea had been transferred perfectly into a system, and not every future decision had been made. But the direction was no longer abstract.

“Now that it is clear, and I have created a better routine, structure and planning on that basis, it has already helped me move much further forward.”

That clarity did not eliminate pressure. It made pressure easier to interpret.

A demanding week could still be demanding. A major client project could still disrupt other plans. But Jerry was increasingly able to see the disruption as temporary, rather than as evidence that he had lost control.

He had also become better at recognising when writing things down was no longer optional.

“There are really things I have to write down,” he said, “because otherwise it simply isn’t going to work.”

For someone who had previously allowed too much to remain mentally active, externalising commitments became a way to protect attention.

Learning to communicate the trade-offs

One of the clearest signs of change was the way Jerry talked about prioritisation.

He no longer described it as a private exercise in trying to fit everything in. Instead, it had become a communication process.

“It is a matter of communicating well,” he said.

When a new request arrived, he could identify what would move down the list as a result. If something still needed to happen, the conversation could shift towards finding support or involving someone else.

That is a more mature form of workload management than simply working harder. It acknowledges that capacity is limited and that priorities are organisational decisions, not personal failures.

Jerry could see the difference in himself.

“I’m getting much better at managing that pressure,” he said.

This did not mean he had become detached or unambitious. If anything, he was still operating at very high intensity. At one point, he described himself as being “at 150 per cent” while several projects were moving at once.

The shift was that he could recognise the state he was in.

He could also see the need for recovery before exhaustion made the decision for him. An upcoming holiday was not simply time away. It became an opportunity to step outside the constant operational rhythm and review what should happen next.

“I notice that I am constantly working on the projects,” he said. “So it is good to get away from it for a while.”

That instinct also shaped the way he approached reflection. Rather than rushing through a half-year review because it was scheduled, Jerry chose to postpone the final session until he could prepare properly.

“I would rather come to that meeting prepared,” he said.

Previously, the impulse might have been to complete the exercise simply because it was there. Now, he was more willing to protect the conditions required for useful thinking.

Building while finding direction

The timing mattered because Jerry was not reflecting from a standstill.

Alongside his regular work, he was developing a consumer brand with a business partner. The webshop was nearly ready. A launch plan had been created. They were working through content, physical marketing, social media, pricing and the question of how to position the product.

The business introduced exactly the kind of ambiguity that can reactivate old patterns.

Should the product launch at a premium price? Should the company sacrifice margin to encourage trial? Should it use discounts while maintaining a high reference price? Would a subscription model fit better than relying on repeated one-off purchases?

Jerry did not pretend to have every answer.

“I think it is also simply a matter of testing,” he said.

That willingness to test marked another useful change. Not every decision had to be solved through prolonged internal analysis. Some could be treated as hypotheses, measured and reviewed.

He and his business partner planned to create regular reflection moments, stepping out of day-to-day execution to assess what was working and what needed adjustment.

“Even if it is once a month or once every two months,” Jerry said, “we need to step out of the operational side and look at how things have gone and what we may need to tweak.”

The same principle applied to his own development. Structure was not a rigid system imposed once and followed forever. It was a way to create enough stability to make better decisions as circumstances changed.

Knowing when support has done its job

As the coaching programme came to an end, Jerry made a deliberate choice not to continue immediately.

It was not because the work had failed. It was because the original questions had become clearer.

“The most important thing has been resolved for me,” he said. “That is already a big win.”

He wanted to focus on the projects already in motion and test whether the routines and systems he had built would hold without the same level of external support.

“Personal development remains an ongoing project,” he said. “But right now I know what I’m doing and what I’m working towards.”

That is a less dramatic outcome than the language often used around personal change. There was no claim that every struggle had disappeared. Jerry was clear that things might become less consistent over time, or that he might eventually run into a new problem that required support.

But he was no longer standing in the same fog.

He had a direction. He had routines that felt increasingly like his own. He had a clearer way to communicate limits, choose priorities and separate intense periods from permanent patterns.

Perhaps most importantly, he no longer needed to solve every uncertainty before moving.

The question for others in a similar position may not be whether they are capable of working harder. Jerry was already capable of that.

A more useful question is whether all that effort is connected to a direction they have consciously chosen.

When that question resonates, a conversation can be a useful place to begin.