The Rocking Chair Syndrome

A lot of owners are living in a state of overwhelm and calling it leadership.

The calendar is full. The Slack is loud. The inbox is a second full-time job. Every vendor wants a meeting. Every customer wants yesterday. Every internal fire feels urgent. You go home tired and somehow still behind. That exhaustion feels like proof you are working hard. Often it is proof of something else: motion without direction.

What overwhelm actually is

Overwhelm is not just “a lot to do.” Overwhelm is when the volume of inputs exceeds your capacity to choose. Everything arrives tagged urgent. Nothing gets ranked. Your nervous system becomes the project manager. In that state, you do not lead — you react. You clear the closest fire. You attend the loudest meeting. You buy the tool that promises relief. Then tomorrow looks identical, only louder.

Overwhelm is also contagious. A leader living there trains a company to live there. People stop asking “what matters?” and start asking “what is screaming?” That is how shops get busy enough to feel important and stalled enough to feel doomed at the same time.

The rocking-chair syndrome

I call the next layer rocking-chair syndrome: always busy, never going anywhere.

A rocking chair moves. It burns energy. It makes noise. From a distance it looks like activity. From inside it, you can feel the effort in your legs. And when you stand up, you are in the same spot on the porch.

That is the company with back-to-back status meetings and no shipped improvement. The marketing calendar packed with posts that do not move revenue. The “AI initiative” that is seventeen demos and zero production systems. The owner who works seventy hours and cannot name what changed this quarter except the fatigue.

Rocking-chair syndrome loves overwhelm. Overwhelm supplies the fuel. The chair supplies the illusion of progress. Together they keep good people occupied while the market walks past the porch. If you need the sharper version of false motion in AI specifically, pair this with The Demo Is Not the Product and Work Until You’re Done — finishing is how you get off the chair.

When you know you’re on the porch

• Your weeks are full and your scoreboard is flat.
• Every conversation starts with “we’re slammed” and ends with no decision.
• Vendors send decks; nobody owns the next action.
• Customers ask for partnership and get a ticket queue.
• Your best people are tired of motion that never becomes momentum.

If that list stings, good. Sting is the first honest sensor. The fix is not another app for your to-do list. The fix is a different standard for how people show up — inside the company and across the table.

Partnerships with more than an appetite

Overwhelm and rocking chairs thrive in weak partnerships: one side hungry, the other side performing hunger. A vendor who wants the contract. A customer who wants the outcome. Both arrive with an appetite — and neither brings a plate, a plan, or a willingness to do the hard middle.

Real partnerships are different. All parties show up to the table with more than an appetite. Vendors and customers help each other. They show up. They suit up. They participate.

• Show up — present, prepared, on time, with the real constraints named. Not a proxy who can only “take it back.”
• Suit up — bring competence, data, decisions, and skin in the game. Appetite without capability is just wanting.
• Participate — do the work between meetings. Answer. Test. Decide. Improve. A partnership is not a performance you watch; it is a build you join.

When vendors and customers help each other like that, overwhelm drops because ownership is shared and clear. Rocking-chair motion dies because the table has a destination: ship something that changes the scoreboard. That is the spirit behind a fully AI-enabled vendor network and behind client-first work — not theater, mutual participation.

What fails when appetite is the only thing on the table

• Meetings become the product. Everyone leaves “aligned” and nothing ships.
• Blame replaces building. The vendor says the customer would not engage; the customer says the vendor would not lead. Both are describing the same empty chair.
• You stay overwhelmed on purpose. Busyness becomes identity. Rest feels like risk. Progress feels foreign.
• Your thinkers check out. People who want a thinking game will not stay on a porch swing forever.

Proof from the operating seat

Every meaningful rebuild I have lived through required partners who brought more than appetite — customers willing to test ugly versions, vendors willing to change their own stack, teammates willing to trade rocking-chair activity for finished outcomes. The 320 to 38 story is not only an AI story. It is a participation story: fewer people, clearer ownership, less performative busy, more shipped reality.

Appetite starts the conversation. Participation finishes the work.

Action — get off the porch

1. Name the overwhelm. This week, list the top ten inputs owning your attention. Circle the three that change the scoreboard. Starve the rest for seven days.
2. Audit the rocking chair. For every recurring meeting, write the shipped outcome it produced last month. If you cannot name one, cancel or redesign it.
3. Rewrite one partnership. Pick one vendor and one key customer. Ask each: what are you bringing besides appetite? What does “suit up and participate” mean in the next thirty days — specifically?
4. Make participation visible. Reward the partner (internal or external) who showed up with work, not wants. Innovation and progress are evidence, not vibes.

If your leadership team is stuck in overwhelm and needs the argument in a room, Leading in the AI Era or book the keynote. If the team needs skill and structure, start at /training. If you want the longer letter on judgment under pressure, read Hands Up.

Stop confusing exhaustion with progress. Get out of the rocking chair. Build partnerships where everyone arrives fed enough to work — and hungry enough to finish.