Episode 0Apr 27, 2026· 14:28

🔒 How I Make Ambitious Biz Plans Without Burning Out

▸ Show notes from the creator

Today I’m very excited to share a workshop on gentle business planning — AKA how I make ambitious plans for my biz while also healing my burnout! In this audio (and video!) workshop, I walk you through: Why we’re always planning (even when we think we’re “behind”) My 6 tenets for Gentle Business Planning List-making prompts for the season ahead in your work How to turn reflective prompts into a clear marketing & sales calendar & How I use the Nine To Kind Digital planner to organize my projects Tune in here to hear my 6 tenets of Gentle Business Planning. Then head to the Clubhouse to enjoy the entire workshop. The recording is free for everyone this week only and available to paid Clubhouse supporters forever. Paid subscribers also get an edited audio version of the workshop AND a Notion doc with all the prompts to make this process super easy to do any time. So press play for a preview, then head to the Clubhouse to support the show! You can find this specific episode here :)

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About this episode

Amelia Hruby shares a preview of her gentle business planning workshop covering her personal method for working toward ambitious goals without burnout, overwork, or the collapse-and-abandon cycle. Topics include planning from inner authority rather than external pressure, capacity-aware scheduling, breaking projects into tasks using an areas-projects-tasks framework, "do dates" versus deadlines, flexible timelines,…

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Who this episode is for

This episode may resonate with you if:

You've made ambitious plans before and watched yourself blow past your limits, crash, get sick, and then quietly abandon everything you'd mapped out — and you're tired of that cycle repeating.

You have a big vision for your work but you're also someone who will try to execute the entire thing before the end of the week — and some part of you knows that's not sustainable.

You're self-employed and you feel the constant pull of external 'shoulds' — every workshop, every strategy, every piece of advice telling you what you're supposed to be doing — and you've lost touch with what you actually want.

You were a high achiever who learned to push through everything, and now that conditioning is working against you — you still orient around deadlines and dread instead of actually taking care of yourself.

You've had days where your body forced you to stop — pain, exhaustion, illness — and you felt guilty about it instead of just letting it be a day where you did less.

You want to be productive and get things done, but you're suspicious of hustle culture framing — you're looking for a way to work that doesn't require you to override yourself to prove something.

What you’ll learn

Root into your own priorities before making any plan

Always consider capacity when scheduling ambitious projects

Break big projects into tasks that fit in one discrete work session

Plan with 'do dates' instead of deadlines

Embrace flexible timelines to avoid the push-collapse cycle

Questions this episode wrestles with

Can you really have big ambitions without burning out, or do you have to choose?

open question

Amelia doesn't resolve the tension cleanly — she describes still overworking even now, while also sharing that staying in flow with her energy has made her more productive, not less. The question sits open in her own life.

"And so, again, these are, like I said, my tenets of gentle business planning, and they've taken time for me to actually put into place. And it still happens sometimes. Sometimes I still overwork. I'm not, like, immune to any of that. If most of you saw the projects on my schedule right now, you'd be like, Amelia, you are currently overworking. But also what I've found is that the more in touch with my capacity I am, the more I'm in this practice, it's actually more malleable. I can be much more aware of like, okay, this day has one too many calls, but I can do that today because I know that. So tomorrow I'm building in some rest or I'm doing something different. Right? The more we connect with ourselves and tend to ourselves."

Is slowing down just a way of wanting less?

answered

Amelia says it's not about wanting less or doing more — it's that forcing and overriding herself actually misfires her creativity and capacity, whereas staying in flow lets her get a lot done as a "dynamic human being."

"In my experience, like I actually can get more done. I'm not doing this just to do more. It's not about a productivity hustle, but when I actually stay in flow with my energy, I am quite productive. I can get a lot done, not from forcing, not from shoulds, but because I'm a dynamic human being. And part of that means that like we have so much creativity and capacity, but it may misfire or not function if we're constantly overrunning, overruling, overriding ourselves."

Is 'planning from your values' actually different from just doing whatever you feel like?

open question

Amelia frames the difference as planning from "deeper desires and motivations" rather than external shoulds, but also admits the practice took years to stick and that she still overworks — leaving the question of whether it's truly different somewhat open.

"And our goal, or my goal today is to root us into our own authority and agency to believe that we can make and execute plans from a place of inner knowing rather than external should, instead of shoulding all over ourselves, as they say with our plan, I want us to think about how we can plan from a place of our deeper desires and motivations. So we'll start with a meditation in just a moment to do that. And then I'm gonna provide a series of spring planning prompts. I love to make lists, so we will make a series of lists. I think I have seven lists for us to plan together today."

If you keep moving your deadlines, are you actually planning or just procrastinating?

answered

Amelia distinguishes between "due dates" (the day she plans to do something) and deadlines (external assignment-style cutoffs), arguing that flexible timelines aren't avoidance — they're the scaffolding that actually gets tasks done, rather than building dread toward a single date.

"And we have to work together on moving between, okay, how do we actually get this project done? We focus on all the steps along the way. So something that I do a lot of my gentle planning is breaking big projects into tasks. And then when I plan personally, again, these are my tenants, so they don't have to be things you do, but this is what works for me. I like to plan with due dates, D O dates. What is the day I'm going to do the thing? Instead of planning with due dates, DUE dates, like assignment deadlines. So if you were to look at my personal calendar, I write down the day I'm going to do something. When will I be writing the email? When will I be calling the accountant?"

What's the difference between flexible timelines and never finishing anything?

answered

Amelia acknowledges that some things genuinely have to get done by certain times, but says the difference is orienting around the tasks and your energy rather than the deadline itself — as she did on a painful day when she moved everything non-essential and still showed up for her two required calls.

"And it doesn't mean that there aren't things that have to get done by certain times. There absolutely are. But instead of orienting again around that deadline, I try to orient around, okay, I know I need to get this done. I know it's gonna take these tasks and I can fit those in as my energy allows. So for instance, you know, yesterday was for me day two of my menstrual cycle, which means I'm in pain and I'm grumpy and I don't wanna do anything."

Setting expectations: This episode is not a productivity framework, a burnout-recovery guide, or a structured business planning course. It's a personal audio preview of a paid workshop where Amelia shares the specific tenets she uses to stop overriding her own capacity — things like scheduling around a painful menstrual cycle day or resisting the urge to cram an entire vision into one week.

Tone & style

Amelia starts from a belief that plans must be executed against hard deadlines and that pushing through capacity is normal, describes a repeated cycle of overworking, collapsing, getting sick, and abandoning plans entirely, then shares the six tenets she developed in response — ending with an honest admission that she's still sometimes overworking, but reports more flow and actual output when she stays in the practice.

Lived experience and personal opinion. Amelia consistently frames these as her own tenets, not universal advice — 'these are my tenets, so they don't have to be things you do, but this is what works for me.'

toneCandid & practical

focusAmelia walks through the six personal tenets she developed after years of overworking, collapsing, and abandoning plans — framed explicitly as what works for her, not a prescription.

styletutorial

energymedium_low

complexitybeginner

pressure Levellow

emotional Texturewarm, honest, gently instructional, self-aware

Notable quotes

"I will say too, like, it took me years to actually make my business work this way because I was so conditioned to work with deadlines and I was so conditioned to push through my capacity. And I was always going beyond it and then collapsing. Like, I would always push past my capacity. I'd overrule and override myself, and then I would collapse. And then I would get sick, and then I'd have to, like, slowly reemerge."

— Amelia Hruby

"And it doesn't mean that there aren't things that have to get done by certain times. There absolutely are. But instead of orienting again around that deadline, I try to orient around, okay, I know I need to get this done. I know it's gonna take these tasks and I can fit those in as my energy allows. So for instance, you know, yesterday was for me day two of my menstrual cycle, which means I'm in pain and I'm grumpy and I don't wanna do anything. So yesterday, I had two calls on the calendar that I did have to show up for, and I did those. But I stayed in bed until about ten minutes before them, and I got back in bed about ten minutes after them, and that's all I did yesterday. Everything else that had a due date of yesterday on the calendars got moved to a different day. And so that's how I try to have that flexibility that considers my capacity. And sometimes it takes time."

— Amelia Hruby

"And so, again, these are, like I said, my tenets of gentle business planning, and they've taken time for me to actually put into place. And it still happens sometimes. Sometimes I still overwork. I'm not, like, immune to any of that. If most of you saw the projects on my schedule right now, you'd be like, Amelia, you are currently overworking."

— Amelia Hruby

Episode transcript

5 chapters — tap to expand the full text

Amelia introduces the Off the Grid Clubhouse, explains the workshop's origins from a live summit, and outlines the free one-week access window versus paid subscriber perks including a Notion document and planning meditation.