It may be the month of back-to-school pressures but this September Sophie Morris is learning how to say ‘no’ to the demand of being busy
Here we are: shiny September. A month that everyone seems to charge at. New school term. A fresh start. The perfect opportunity to outline ambitious goals, set impossible exercise targets, paint the house, replant the garden, and achieve world peace before the end of the year.
During the first half of 2025, I felt increasingly “busy”. Seemingly having more to do than ever, yet making little progress. It was a shame, because there’s nothing more boring than hearing how busy someone else is. Yet there I was, with no time to work and even less to play. I didn’t have enough hours with my family, nor sufficient space on my own. When any uninvited extras forced their way into my diary, I reacted with the grace of a toddler having a tooth extraction.
The arrival of summer helped. I avoided social media, hardly watched television and was rarely awake after 11pm. The only stress on our holiday - a UK road trip - was avoiding sheep on the road. Now, feeling refreshed, like I’ve given my brain and my body a genuine rest, I’m wondering if it is possible to hold on to that and resist the September push for productivity?
The experts suggest it would be good for me. “Doing less can have a profound impact on how we feel, both mentally and physically,” explains Natalie Mackenzie, a cognitive rehabilitation therapist and brain injury expert. “Our brains weren’t designed to operate at full capacity all the time. Nor did they expect to have to cope with the constant demands of the modern world.
“We shouldn’t be ‘on’ all of the time. We’re essentially forcing our brains into a state of chronic stress, which floods the body with cortisol and impairs critical functions like memory, decision-making, attention, information processing and emotional regulation.”
But, despite my good intentions, the promise of cute stationery and a task list to plough through is like catnip to a recovering perfectionist. Society rewards “busyness” as a byword for success and popularity. Stress and anxiety are considered indispensable bedfellows. The fetishisation of productivity across all areas of life has left so many of us flapping about in an interminable Squid Game of lifestyle management, trying to game things as unremarkable as breakfast.
So how should I approach the new season without falling into this busyyness trap?
Declutter your diary What if we ploughed our efforts into doing less instead of more? Bestselling author Sarah Knight, the doyenne of mental decluttering, has been leading the charge for cutting back since her hit self-help book, a satirical take on the Marie Kondo tidying craze, came out in 2015.
The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k (Quercus, £16.99) coaches readers to work out what matters to them in life, and ditch caring about the rest. “I do think a lot of the tendency toward ‘recluttering’ is baked into the school calendar,” she tells me. “Especially for parents whose kids are not only going back to class, but also to the tasks and activities that accompany school, which adds a huge scheduling burden on top of everything else.”
Knight recommends regular resets. “This is why it helps to think of mental decluttering the same way you think of physical decluttering; you can’t just add, add, add without taking away. One annual cleaning does not keep the house clean all year. And just because the calendar has turned a page does not mean you suddenly have more than 24 hours in a day, or more energy or money to spend! You need to take a spin through your mental landscape periodically and identify things that don’t belong or aren’t serving you, in order to free up space (be it mental, physical, financial, or otherwise) for new, more important, and/ or more pleasurable ones.”
A quick spin through my own mental landscape reveals that while I’m good at saying “no”, I then endure days of mental gymnastics, guilt-ridden about turning down an invitation. “Please know that nobody cares half as much about your life decisions as you think they do,” says Knight. “Most of the guilt is coming from inside the house, and you need to learn how to say ‘no’ to yourself in order to say it effectively to other people. Saying ‘no’ is not an inherently bad, cruel, hurtful thing. Just be honest and polite and move on with your life.”
Unsqueeze your children’s schedule too It’s fashionable to talk about 1980s-style childhoods: limiting tech use and letting children roam free. I love the idea, but if we cut back on their extra-curricular activities, won’t children fill the gap with screen-time?
“Scheduling less after school is not about doing nothing, it’s about replacing activity with presence, play, and simple shared routines,” explains clinical psychologist and parenting expert Dr Martha Deiros Collado, whose new book The Smartphone Solution: When and How To Give Your Child a Phone came out last week.
“Phones and tablets can feel like the easy option when there is less to do. But rest doesn’t mean scrolling. It means recharging in ways that are meaningful and bring us contentment. Make sure you model what rest looks like [at home].”
Make a ‘Must-Do List’ Doing less doesn’t mean letting everything slide. Knight points out that in a world full of potential catastrophe like climate change, taking charge of your own small day-to-day responsibilities can feel empowering. “My ‘Must-Do List’ is simple and effective,” she says. “You take everything on your to-do list and prioritise the items based on urgency - i.e., what must get done today? Then you do those things and leave the rest for tomorrow.
“This system forces you to focus on a smaller, more achievable daily goal, which reduces overall stress. And because you’ve set a more achievable goal, you’re more likely to meet it, which feels good and sets you up for future success. It’s a win-win.”
Ring-fence your work emails ! This might sound obvi! ous but is easier said than done: set strict ! boundaries around work if you want to maintain the benefits of a summer break. The benefits are proven, long-lasting, and vital to your brain health.
“Overwork thins the frontal cortex in the same way that ageing does,” Joseph Jebelli, author of The Brain at Rest (Torva, £20), told The Times. “It makes the brain older than it is. Studies from researchers in Scandinavia have shown that once overwork sets in, it can take up to three years to recover. So protect the gains of your holiday by ringfencing your evenings, turning off notifications and resisting the urge to check your work emails at night.”
Schedule a sabbath Praying won’t bring you more time, but booking in some regular do-nothing time is a divine act of self-care. I try to keep one day per weekend or fortnight to do absolutely diddly squat, and the results have been remarkable.
Why? I don’t necessarily do nothing. What hap! pens is that I end up doing what I want to do. It might be reading magazines. I could end up going out with friends. But it also makes time to do “boring” household stuff. As dreary as that sounds, it brings huge knock-on benefits - if I get annoying jobs out of the way, they don’t prey on my mind during the week.
Do one thing well Women have long boasted of their power to multitask, but might focus produce better results? “I’ve given up multitasking,” says Francesca Amber, podcast host and author of Manifest Like a Mother: A Guide for Busy B*tches (Rider, £16.99), out this week. “I no longer try to load the dishwasher whilst talking to my friend on the phone or fold laundry whilst listening to a podcast. Instead I see these household tasks as much-needed cognitive breaks in this digital age where we are overloaded with information. Doing mundane tasks which use our hands more than our brains are fantastic for us mentally, and can even count as a meditation!” Dumb it down in the kitchen Have you noticed how a typical recipe reel requires 32 different herbs and spices and two hours of prep time? Chop, poach, sear, scorch excruciating when there are mouths to feed.
One aspect of decluttering that has improved my life immeasurably has been the extreme simplification of my shopping and cooking habits. It simultaneously provokes melancholy - I wish I could do more but I can’t.
The phrase ‘Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom’, coined by Shirley Conran in her book Superwoman in the 1970s and borrowed by Prue Leith as the title of her recent cookbook, sounds old-fashioned but the meaning rings true.
Plan long-term For me, doing less isn’t about slacking off or giving up. Nearly all the advice on getting male partners to share the mental load at home advises women to reduce expectations. Why should we? Doing less is a personal thing, and you’re the only person who can decide if you’d rather have ironed bedsheets or a long bath.
However, what really frustrates me about the “do less” mindset is how it has been co-opted by corporate productivity types who actually want us to do more. There are scores of books out there about doing less, but most of them are really about doing less so that one can, ultimately, do more: have a rest in order to jump back on the hamster wheel and peddle twice as fast.
“Doing less isn’t a temporary thing,” insists Mackenzie. “It’s a shift in how you understand cognitive capacity. The brain likes balance, although many of us kid ourselves it thrives on pressure and need. It needs periods of intense focus followed by deliberate rest to consolidate memories, process emotions, and clear out toxins. This is why practices like mindfulness, taking breaks, and even daydreaming are so beneficial.”
I doubt I’ll ever get over the desire to do more, even when I’m looking for ways to do less. Admitting to planfree weekends makes me feel kind of sub-par. I’m still ashamed of confessing to being too tired to go out.
To counter this, I have made a list of things I plan not to do for the rest of the year. I will not listen to voicenotes. I will not look at my phone before 9am (unlikely). I will not look at email or WhatsApp after 7pm (entirely doable). I will not re-read magazines “just in case” I missed something. I will not flagellate myself for using the tumble dryer in this era of environmental chaos. I will not make the four-hour round trip into London for someone’s birthday drinks just because they’ve invited me. I will not respond in WhatsApp groups I’ve been added to without permission. I I will not give life advice in i n national newspapers.
We tend to talk about other people in terms of what they do and what they’ve done. Admitting you do “as little as possible” won’t pique anyone’s interest, but it might be the best way to turn over a new leaf this autumn.
FAST FACTS STRESS POINTS
One in three adults (34 per cent) in Britain experience high levels of pressure and stress “always” or “often”, according to 2025 research by YouGov and Mental Health UK
The same report found that women were more likely than men (94 per cent vs 89 per cent) to have experienced high or extreme levels of pressure or stress in the past year
According to analysis of Google search data, people in London are the most likely to express a feeling of burnout (followed by Melbourne and Singapore)
Stress can feel unavoidable but doing more to combat long-term stress and burnout is crucial for your health.
The NHS says symptoms of stress include: headaches, muscle tension, stomach problems, chest pain, difficulty concentrating, feeling overwhelmed, constantly worrying and being forgetful