The Great Overwhelm

And what to do about it

Something has shifted

You feel it, don’t you?

Not just the post-holiday tiredness, though that was there too. Not just the January blues or the short days or the new year pressure to suddenly reinvent yourself – “new year, new you” BS.

Something deeper. A kind of internal change that’s been hard to name. Like the ground has shifted a few centimetres and everything you built on it is still standing, just at a slightly different angle.

You’re still showing up, managing your kids and household; still serving your clients, still running your business. But something underneath feels different. Heavier. Uncertain?

If that’s where you are right now, this article is for you.

Because you’re not imagining it. You’re not being dramatic. You’re not failing to “stay positive” or “focus on your goals.”

You are a sensitive, switched-on woman running a business in one of the most disorienting moments in recent history - and you are feeling it exactly as you can be expected to feel.

Let’s talk about what’s actually going on.

The Snake has shed its skin

In Chinese astrology, we have just moved through the final weeks of the Year of the Snake, and are stepping across the threshold into the Year of the Horse.

Note: I am not heavily into Chinese astrology, but it’s been impossible to escape the wave of news and updates around it.

So for what it’s worth: The Snake was a year of introspection. Of hidden depths. Of slow, deliberate transformation happening beneath the surface, mostly invisible to the outside world. Snake energy is wise, intuitive, coiled. It demands that you go inward, sit still, and let things shed that need to shed.

And if January felt like a “shedding” of sorts — of old clients, old habits, old versions of your business or yourself — that makes complete astrological sense. The Snake was doing its final work. Or that’s what the astrologers say!(?)

The snake clears the path. The horse carries you forward.

The Horse energy is entirely different. Fast. Spirited. Wild in the best and most demanding sense. The Horse doesn’t wait for you to feel ready. It stamps its feet and moves.

So here you are: post the shedding and into the gallop. Still catching your breath from one, not yet sure how to hold the reins of the other.

No wonder you feel overwhelmed. So do I.

The world is moving faster than our nervous system

Even without the astrology, there’s the small matter of... everything else.

The AI landscape is no longer moving quickly. It’s moving violently.

Every week — sometimes every few days — a new model launches, a new capability emerges, a new headline arrives. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok — the names blur.

The claims escalate. “This changes everything.” “This is the last generation of this kind of tool.” “Nothing will be the same.” “The robots are coming. What will be human purpose.”(!).

And then the markets. The economy. The quiet, uneasy conversation happening in every industry about what jobs will exist in three years, in five years (and what won’t) — and what that means for the clients you serve, for the business you are trying to grow in the middle of all of this, for the world your children will inherit, for the future of this planet.

As a solopreneur, I feel this differently from someone inside a corporation.

There’s no HR department absorbing the shock. No management layer to filter the noise. It lands directly on your nervous system; and then you have to get on a client call and hold space for someone else’s nervous system too.

You are not bad at business. You are a human being processing an inhuman amount of change.

This matters to say out loud, because the overwhelm can convince you otherwise. It can whisper that other people are thriving, that you’re falling behind, that if you were just more disciplined or more strategic or more something, you’d feel fine. You wouldn’t. This is hard for everyone. It’s just that not everyone is talking about it.

We are entering the exponential age

To understand why this moment feels so different, it helps to understand one thing: we are not in a fast linear period of change. We are in an exponential one.

Raoul Pal, investor and founder of Real Vision, has written and spoken extensively about what he calls The Universal Code — the idea that technology adoption curves follow predictable exponential patterns; and that now because AI, crypto, and other converging technologies are all hitting a steep adoption curve at the same time, this moment is different in scale. He describes this as the greatest wealth-creating and disruption-causing period in human history. Not decade. History.

We are living through the most extraordinary moment of technological transformation ever seen. Most people haven’t processed what that actually means yet, (paraphrasing Raoul Pal)

Entrepreneur Matt Shumer recently wrote an article on the state of the world with AI that now has over 83 million views and called it “something big is happening”. The article has echoed through the online community, because it captures something that data alone can’t quite articulate. A feeling of threshold. Of before and after.

And then there is Gary Marcus — cognitive scientist, NYU professor, and perhaps the most important voice of reasoned scepticism in the AI conversation, added his thoughts to the chaos Shumer caused. Marcus does not deny the scale of what is happening. What he pushes back on is the certainty. The hype. The tendency to get flustered from something written by one person with a lot of emotion and making it feel like world-altering inevitability.

“Impressive isn’t the same as reliable. And reliable isn’t the same as trustworthy. We should not surrender our critical thinking just because something is astonishing.” — Gary Marcus

But here is what ties all of these voices together, and Allie Miller enters the conversation.

Miller is one of the most followed voices in AI business globally, named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people in AI, and someone who has trained millions of professionals in how to actually use these tools. She speaks with the authority of someone who has been inside the machine for over 20 years and her message to the rest of us is both clarifying and urgent.

Miller talks about what she calls the information asymmetry of the AI age. The divide, she argues, is not primarily between the technically gifted and the rest. It’s between those who are actively learning about AI - who are curious, engaged, acquiring knowledge, and putting it into practice - and those who are watching from the sidelines, overwhelmed or dismissive, waiting for things to settle down before they engage.

That asymmetry compounds over time. The people who are learning AI right now - not mastering everything, but learning intentionally, consistently, and applying what they learn - are building what Miller calls an “intelligence advantage.” Not because they’re smarter. Because they’re earlier. And in exponential systems, being earlier matters enormously.

This is not a message designed to panic you. It’s a message designed to orient you. Because here is what Miller also says: you don’t need to be a technologist.

You don’t need to understand how large language models work under the hood. What you need is to be the kind of person who stays curious, who acquires knowledge deliberately, and who closes the gap between learning and doing. Read, then act. Understand, then integrate. Don’t wait until you feel ready. Start before you feel ready.

What do we do with all four of these voices? We hold them all.

Raoul Pal says: the wave is real, and it is enormous.

Matt Shumer says: you are not imagining the scale of this moment.

Gary Marcus says: but stay awake — keep thinking, don’t outsource your judgment.

And Allie Miller says: the gap between those learning and those not is widening every single day. Choose which side you’re on.

All four are right. And somewhere in the tension between them is where you, as a solopreneur and mum navigating this landscape, need to find your footing.

More robots than people

Now add one more voice to the room. One that is harder to ignore or dismiss.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, Elon Musk made his first-ever appearance at the gathering he had previously dismissed as elitist. Speaking with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, he looked out at a room full of global leaders and said something that landed quietly but heavily:

“My prediction is that there will be more robots than people.” — Elon Musk, Davos 2026

Not someday in the abstract. He was speaking of a near future — one where Tesla’s Optimus robots move from factory floors to homes, where humanoid machines watch over your children, care for elderly parents, and perform complex tasks that currently require human hands and human judgment.

He has separately predicted that by 2040, humanoid robots will outnumber the 8 billion people currently on the planet. “Every country will have an AI or multiple AIs,” he said, “and there will be a lot of robots, way more robots than people.”

He didn’t frame this as dystopia. He framed it as abundance. But then he said something that cuts much closer to home for those of us running human-centred businesses:

“The question will really be one of meaning: if the computer and robots can do everything better than you, does your life have meaning?” — Elon Musk

That is not a comfortable question. But it is the right one.

And for coaches, consultants, solopreneurs and professionals of every kind — whether you run your own business or work inside someone else’s — it is the question that everything else hangs on right now.

Gary Marcus offers the counterweight to this dilemma. He disputes Musk’s timeline and scale, noting that even the best-selling consumer robot in history — the Roomba — has sold just 50 million units, and that imagining billions of reliable, safe humanoid robots in the near term is “fantasy.” The technical and safety challenges remain enormous. So the economics are uncertain and the hype is real.

But here is what both Musk the optimist and Marcus the sceptic agree on: the direction of progress is not in question. Automation, AI, and robotics are moving into the spaces where human labour currently lives. Not all at once and not without resistance. But steadily, and faster than most of us are ready for.

Which means the question is no longer whether the world is changing around you. It’s what you are going to make irreplaceably yours within it.

Your humanness is the asset

Here is what a robot cannot do.

It cannot carry the specific texture of a life lived. It cannot bring the weight of having survived something, rebuilt something, changed direction at 35 or 42 or 51 and figured out who you are on the other side.

It cannot hold a client in the particular way that you do — shaped by your history, your failures, your hard-won clarity about what actually matters.

It cannot love and parent your kids like you can.

It cannot be you.

In a world moving towards automation, your human story is not a soft differentiator. It is a hard competitive advantage.

The more the world fills with machine-generated content, machine-performed tasks, and machine-made decisions, the rarer and more precious genuine human presence becomes. Not human presence in the generic sense, human presence in the specific, irreplicable sense.

Your life experience, your perspective, your voice — these are not the soft stuff. In the exponential age, they are the product.

But here’s the challenge: if no one can see you, your thoughts, your perspectives, none of that matters.

This is true whether you are a parent, building your own business or climbing inside someone else’s.

Whether you are a coach, a consultant, a creative, or a corporate leader trying to stay relevant as the ground shifts beneath your industry. In a crowded, fast-moving, increasingly automated market, visibility is not vanity. It is survival strategy.

The people who will attract the most opportunity in the next three to five years — whether that’s clients, collaborations, promotions, or partnerships — are not necessarily the most qualified. They are the most visible, the most clearly positioned, and the most consistently showing up in the spaces where decisions are being made about who to trust, hire, follow, or buy from.

What to do about it

Now the practical part. Because insight without action is paralysis.

Be seen. Now.

Being seen is the one thing you can start doing immediately. Today. Before you feel ready. Before you have it figured out. Before the overwhelm has fully cleared.
Not perfectly. Not with a polished brand identity and a 12-week content strategy. Just begin.

Share one thing you know on the platform of your choice (maybe this one!). Tell one story from your work. Offer one perspective on what’s changing in your industry.

Do it on the platform where your people already are — LinkedIn if you’re in the corporate or B2B world, Instagram if you’re in the coaching or wellness space, Substack if you enjoy long form - wherever the people you want to reach, future clients or employers are already scrolling.

Positioning yourself visibly in a rapidly changing market is not about shouting loudest. It’s about being findable at the moment someone needs exactly what you have. That moment is coming for more people than you think, because disruption creates demand for human guidance, trusted perspectives, and genuine expertise. Be there when it arrives.

And the good news is that you don’t have to do this alone or in a thousand hours a week. Learn to use AI to do it well.

Use AI to amplify your human voice, not replace it

This is where Allie Miller’s information asymmetry meets Musk’s robot future in the most practical way possible.

The people who will win in this new landscape are not those who create the most content. They are those who use AI to help them show up more consistently, more clearly, and more authentically than they could alone.

Use AI to help you articulate ideas you’ve been sitting on but haven’t had time to write. Use it to turn a 20-minute client conversation into a thought leadership post. Use it to draft the LinkedIn article about what you’ve learned this year, then edit it in your own voice until it sounds like you, because it should. Use it to research your market, sharpen your positioning, generate the first draft you stare at before you make it real. You no longer have to start with a blank page.

AI doesn’t replace your perspective. It removes the friction between your perspective and the world seeing it.

Position yourself with clarity, not just activity.

Visibility without positioning is noise. What you need is to be clearly associated with something specific — a problem you solve, a transformation you guide, a perspective or belief that is distinctly yours. Not a generic description of what you do. A sharp, memorable answer to the question: “What do you do, and who do you do it for?”

In a world filling up with AI-generated content, the human who wins is not the one who publishes the most. It’s the one who stands for something clear enough that when someone has the problem you solve, your name is the one that surfaces. Work out what that is. State it simply. Repeat it consistently. Let AI help you do it without burning out.

Stop trying to keep up with everything

There is no keeping up. The AI news cycle, the market updates, the LinkedIn thought leaders, the new tools - they are an infinite scroll of the incomprehensible. Your job is not to consume all of it. Your job is to curate ruthlessly and consume intentionally.

Choose two or three trusted voices in the AI and business space. Read them. Ignore the rest. You will miss some things. You will miss far more by trying to track everything and losing your ability to think clearly in the process.

Close the information asymmetry on your terms

This is Allie Miller’s challenge to you, and it’s worth taking seriously. The gap between those learning AI and those who aren’t is not closing, it’s widening.

You don’t need to code or be an AI researcher. But you do need to become someone who is actively, consistently, and intentionally building your AI literacy. One article. One tool. One experiment per week. The compounding effect of small, regular learning is how you move from the passive side of the asymmetry to the active side. Acquire the knowledge, then put it into action. That sequence - learn, then do - is what will separate those who adapt from those who are left behind.

Build a slower inner life to support a faster outer world

The Horse year will reward speed, but not frantic speed. Intentional speed. The difference between the two is almost entirely internal. Solopreneurs who move fast without an inner anchor tend to make expensive decisions, burn out, and lose the thread of what made their work meaningful. Whatever slows you down enough to think - eg morning pages, a daily walk, meditation, a real conversation with a friend -is not a luxury right now. It is foundational.

Trust what has shed

Whatever fell away in January, a client who left, a launch that went flop, a service you retired, a version of your business that stopped feeling true, trust it. The Snake does not shed carelessly. What came off was ready to come off. You are not smaller for it. You are lighter.

What the overwhelm is actually telling you

Here is what I want you to consider before we close: overwhelm is not the opposite of capability. It is often the signal of it.

When you are genuinely overwhelmed - not burned out, not avoidant, but truly maxed out on input - it usually means one of two things. Either you are taking in more than your current capacity can process. Or you are being asked to grow into something your current identity hasn’t caught up with yet.

For most of the women I speak to right now, it’s both.

The overwhelm is not here to break you. It’s here to tell you that the old container is too small for what’s coming.

So before you try to manage the overwhelm, get quiet with it for a moment. What is it actually about? Where in your business or your life is there a gap between who you were and who you’re being called to become? What has January been trying to show you, underneath the heaviness?

This is your permission slip to be okay to slow down to speed up.

The Snake always sheds what no longer fits. The question is whether you’re willing to let go.

The other side of the overwhelm

There is a version of you on the other side of this.

She has moved through the transition. She let January do its work. She found her footing. She chose the active side of the information asymmetry. She started showing up visibly, clearly, and as herself in the spaces where opportunity can find her.

She used AI not as a threat but as a tool that gave her time back and got her voice into the world more consistently than she ever managed alone.

She is not someone who figured it all out. She is someone who kept going, but differently. More deliberately. More anchored. More seen.

And she understood something that the noise of this moment makes easy to forget: in a future with more robots than people, the thing that cannot be automated is her. Her story. Her wisdom. Her way of being with another human in their hardest and most important moments.

Your humanness, your life experience, your way of seeing, these are not the things the world is moving away from. They are precisely what the world is moving towards.

The world is moving fast.

Raoul Pal is right: the wave is real. Matt Shumer is right: something big is happening. Gary Marcus is right: stay awake and keep thinking. Allie Miller is right: the asymmetry is real, choose your side. And Elon Musk is right about one thing above all others: the question of meaning is the question of our time.

You get to answer it. Not with a robot. Not with a prompt. With your life, your work, and your willingness to be seen doing both.

The Horse is stamping its feet. And you are more ready than you feel.