Hello, stars.
I crawled into bed last night already nostalgic for the tail end of Summer 2026, both mind boggled by the transformations August brought and eager for my favorite season to start.
Smart Girls LOVE September; we get permission from the seasonal shift to indulge in big new plans, crisp notebooks, hot lattes, and new boots. In New York, the second the US Open Instagram stories start dropping, I sense my Partiful notifications will soon be skyrocketing and my weekends (and weeknights) will be booked until EOY. The meetings have piled up, the flights are booked, and it’s almost time to start grinding again.
We call it Busy Season.
Every industry has a version of it. Accountants have tax season. Retail has Q4. Fashion has the shows. When you work for yourself, it’s usually all at once: the launches, the pitches, the invoices you need collected before December, the conferences, the panels, the fittings, the weddings, the birthdays, and on top of that the holidays glaring at us.
It’s the stretch that really defines the year, and while it’s one thing to organize on a Google Calendar, it’s quite another to pull it off without some sort of sacrifice.
What I’ve been afraid to admit out loud is, c’mon. We love this. The momentum, the intensity, the feeling of being so productive that you’re slightly feral. It’s one of the best highs available to an ambitious woman, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
It’s also completely unsustainable. Every crash I’ve ever had came from letting that flame run wild rather than building structures to tend to it.
Sometimes, you are just ready for a new challenge, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be scared. As I take on exciting new projects, I’ve found myself being more excited to contribute and excited to work rather than dreading it, because I’ve gotten clear and I’ve built that leverage for myself. I’m THRILLED — but that doesn’t mean that I’m not terrified. And for good reason…..
Every other time I’ve had a season like this one, it has ended in a complete crash and burn.
Let me be specific, because I don’t want to sell you a strategy I’ve never needed myself. The last time I went all the way in, I was writing a book, running my premium bathrobe company Too Collective, starting at Wharton, and going through a breakup. At the same time. All of it looked completely stunning from the outside, obviously, because ambitious material girls never look like their problems. How did it end?
Burnout and the company closing, HAH!
When I closed Too Collective for good and told you it was a send-off, I said release is a portal. I’ve maintained that every time I’ve let something go, something a million times better has rushed in to take its place.
Well. It did! The more aligned career is here! It’s on my calendar!
My nervous system has one data set for wanting something this badly, and that data set is a crash. Which means that when the good season finally arrives, on time, exactly as ordered, some activated part of me reads it as a threat and starts operating in Chaotic Energy.
I think a lot of you are doing this too, by the way: you are very intelligent and you always get the job done, so why are you engaging in reality star-level crashouts every time something minor goes wrong?
This time I know better. I’ve learned to ride the waves instead of stubbornly bracing against them, and I really do believe in living a life in seasons, where some of those seasons are going to ask you to go hard. But what’s the point in working so hard if you’re not also enjoying it?
If you need an example, turn to the ultimate ambitious material girl
As I’ve been contemplating how to make the most of the last four months of the year, I keep coming back to Dolly.
Losing her last week shocked all of us, and I have shed wayyyy more tears than expected reading the tributes to what an unbelievable light she was. Every post confirmed that Dolly Parton is the ultimate ambitious material girl.
The material girl part is really something to be witnessed: the rhinestones, the wigs, the nails, the boobs, the whole glorious construction!
This week, though, hearing about Dolly’s commitment to making the world beautiful through her work was what moved me. She produced and produced and produced, and almost every bit of it turned into something real for other people: a theme park that employs her hometown, millions of books in the hands of children, countless songs and albums. Her manager said last week:
“Dolly worked up until the day she died. She loved seeing her dreams come to life.”
Most of the time, we don’t permit ourselves to see our dreams come to life, and once we do, the sheer amount of work ahead stops us from starting. We fuss that it will take too long, that we don’t deserve the good, and that our success will somehow cancel someone else’s out.
A life where your values get to shine through your work is my version of living fully expressed, and that requires grit, vision, and focus. Dolly’s was undeniable, and her playful spirit is what balanced out that groundbreaking career.
You have more fun when you’re clear on what you’re doing, when you understand the trade-offs you’re making, and when you have a growth mindset about what you’re learning.
Here’s how I’m going about this season, from a place of playfulness and and loving my work.
1. Decide what your Busy Season is FOR
You cannot commit to something you don’t care about.
Every failed sprint I’ve ever had started with a goal I picked because it seemed impressive. Every successful one started with something I knew in my bones that I needed so badly to create that it was almost EMBARRASSING.
Before you fill out the planner and before you color-code a single thing: what is this actually for? Sit with it until you land on an answer that embarrasses you slightly to say out loud. That one’s usually the true one.
Commit to it out loud, because committing to things is the sexiest thing you can possibly do. It’s also the fastest way to build actual confidence, since confidence is just evidence you’ve given yourself. As I said in Smart Girls Decide, stop asking “what should I do?” and start asking “who have I decided to be?” Identity-based decisions require SO much less effort.
2. Detach and call it data
This is the big one! Do not sit down with your goal and decide it has to transform your entire life, fix all of your trauma, and turn you into the perfect person you’ve been trying to be forever. That’s an amazing way for you to strangle your goals!!!!
Instead: I’m testing what this means and I’m excited to learn from it.
I teach this every time we run the 21-Day Challenge inside Creator Essentials. Women come in convinced the assignment is to go viral, and by week two they’ve figured out the real one: to teach your body to stop freaking out about how posting feels.
The reminder for Busy Season: you’re not proving anything to anybody but yourself. You’re executing, getting information, and acting on those insights. The only way out is through!!
(Related, and still true: perfectionism is embarrassing. Done is better than perfect. We’ve been over this!!)
3. Figure out what fun actually IS to you
THEEE hardest or the easiest question, depending on how fun your summer was. You have to answer it before rule 4 will work.
When did you last laugh, like really laugh? What were you doing? Who was there? When did you last help somebody, and how did that feel in your body?
Most of us are chasing a version of fun we saw on the internet. Your real fun might be a crafting session with your partner, a museum by yourself, or making somebody’s week by throwing them a themed dinner party. Mine is almost always people (THE right ones, please and thank you). I need to be laughing.
Fun for me? Me and my girls going to a nice dinner, taking pictures, Uber home blasting Concieted by Remy Ma, switching into sweats and watching a reality TV show while we eat Ritz Bits and Haribo gummy bears.
It means getting to go to the Botanical Gardens alone for 3 straight hours to read my book while my phone is bricked.
In a busy season, I know that I need to schedule that monthly!!!
Get honest about what your fun really is, or you will spend four beautiful months scheduling performative fun that you saw on TikTok.
4. Schedule the fun and give it a color
Now go into your calendar and go LOOKING for the joy. Find the pockets where you’re planning to enjoy yourself, make them conscious, put them in their own color on the GCAL.
What are you most excited about for fall? Is it when the leaves finally turn and you want to make sure you get a good walk in Prospect Park in? Are you a pumpkin spice latte kind of girl (ew, personally, but I love you)? Are you excited for fall fairs and festivals? A Halloween party?
This is the hardest one for me, because my life and my work are so deeply intertwined that fun keeps getting absorbed into work. It needs its own real estate on the calendar.
Try artist dates (Julia Cameron was right). Then make a list of five to ten things you’re setting aside for yourself this fall, and let the anticipation do some of the work. Half the joy is having it on the books. Mine:
A concert. Any concert. I personally am seeing my favorites Don Toliver and Majid Jordan thank god!
A running list of restaurants in my neighborhood I keep meaning to try, and a list of 10 people to text to hang out with this fall
A trip upstate to see the leaves!!!
A dopamine list, refreshed for fall
Every season has a reason. This one gets to be beautiful while you work!
5. Commit to a character
Decision fatigue is eating your productivity and your joy, and the fix is often as simple as a uniform.
I did this in May when I committed to braids, partly because it’s the only hairstyle that lets me be as active as I want to be, and partly because it looks the best on me, no shade to my other hairstyles.
This fall I’m taking it up a level and planning outfits with real intention instead of standing in front of my closet at 8 am and leaving a tornado of Reformation tops behind every day.
Pick your character for the season and commit to the look. Queen Dolly wore the same silhouette for five decades and never spent a single morning wondering who she was going to be that day. It can be as small as a commitment to slick backs and glasses, or to white T-shirts and button-downs for a while. You’d be surprised how much real estate it opens up in your brain!
6. Refresh your space
I rearrange my space every single season (every month maybe, my friends would say….) and I’m aware that’s a very particular kind of crazy Sagittarius behavior, but it WORKS.
I can’t think straight in an ugly room. That’s genuinely one of my core values, Beholderism, the appreciation of beauty. You can call it vanity. I call it taste! This summer I decorated my space to be a little bit lighter, but for the fall I’m refreshing my bedding, making a new vision board, and getting new art.
It can be as small as changing the scent in your apartment. I love new candles for new seasons because they shift the entire feeling of a room in about ten seconds. Actually washing the throw blanket. Putting the summer stuff away.
Mine this season: I’ve decided to stop ordering out. I’m a master manifester, so MacKenzie-Childs gifted me an entirely new set of kitchenware right as I made that decision. To honor the beauty of my new casserole dish, I must become a chef. Absolutely thrilled, obsessed, unwell about it, full haul coming to @ambitiousmaterialgirl soon!
Send me your favorite fall recipes, I’m serious, reply to this email.
7. Name your trade-offs, then say the no
Every season you say yes to is a season you’re saying no to something else, and the women who get flattened by Busy Season are the ones who never accepted what they were trading.
Say it out loud now, while you’re calm and nothing has gone wrong yet. What is getting less of you for the next four months? For me it’s spontaneous plans, saying yes to every coffee, and all the dating apps. I’d rather make peace with that in September than be resentful about it in November.
Things that have no direction end up imploding, so be conscious about it. Your health, your relationships, your money, your rest. Decide what each one gets from you this season instead of finding out in December what it didn’t get.
What are you about to hand over this fall just to be agreeable? Whatever came to mind first, while you were reading that sentence, that’s your NO.
8. Make the floor lower
All Ambitious Girls LOVE to do this, too: walk into the most demanding season of my year and respond by giving myself BIGGER goals. Busiest fall of my life? Great, I’ll work out SEVEN days a week! Sure, babe.
This time I’m setting it at three. Three is a number I will actually hit while everything else is on fire, and hitting it means I get to feel accomplished and proud of myself in a season where I need those feelings more than usual.
Lower the floor everywhere. Workouts, the reading, the calls home, etc. You want a bar you can clear on your worst week, so you can keep your momentum going and stay in the energy of fun. If you have the means, outsource anything you can so your focus stays clear.
9. Play the comeback game
You are going to have setbacks this season, guaranteed. The launch will underperform, the client will ghost, you’ll get sick the week of the industry conference you planned for.
Decide right now that your first response is going to be “okay, I just have to laugh at this,” and then turn it into a game: how fast can I come back from this one?
That’s the only number I track anymore. A setback that used to cost me three days now costs thirty minutes (I dealt with one yesterday and was SOOO proud of myself). I stopped treating every setback as permanent evidence about the outcome, or worse, about my identity, and the recovery time collapsed!
10. Protect your optimism
I pride myself on being an incredibly optimistic person, and I want to be honest with you about how much maintenance that takes. It’s a J-O-B. It requires real protection over my mental, real boundaries (personal policies, if you’re familiar) around what I consume and who gets my attention and how much doom I let in the door.
Optimism is the fuel for a four-month sprint. Guard it accordingly:
I deleted X because I was going down rabbit holes of news that I simply did not need to know. You know what’s NOT FUN? Doom scrolling into a spiral about how stupid the general population is becoming.
Then spend some of your optimism on somebody else. Check on the friend who went quiet. Send the intro you said you would. Say the specific nice thing out loud instead of thinking it. We only really thrive as a community, and the fastest way I know to refill your own energy is to give to someone else.
We have to take this life seriously in order to enjoy it.
I know that sounds backwards. But the women having the most fun are always the ones most committed to LIVING.
Dolly P is the proof. Nobody worked harder, nobody laughed more, and she got to keep doing it until the very last day because she genuinely loved it.
You weren’t given this ambition as a punishment. It’s a gift. You get to build a life on purpose, and you’re allowed to enjoy the building!
Wear the uniform, buy the candle, and lower the bar, babe!
Before you go: I’m teaching this Monday
Nobody is going to discover you.
Being good at your job stopped being enough a while ago. Visibility is its own skill, and almost none of us were taught it, so we either sit it out entirely or post into the void and end up sounding like everyone else online.
Monday, September 7, 11am ET, I’m teaching a free workshop called CREDIBLE. You’ll leave with a one-page Content Direction Map: your content thesis, three conversation territories that are actually yours, your uncopyable lens, a leverage goal, and nine ideas you can start on this week. It’s the same thing I build with 1:1 clients.
If your Busy Season is the one where your work finally reaches the right rooms, start here.
SAVE YOUR SEAT → REGISTRATION LINK
p.s. See ya Thursday for the first edition of my new interview series about what makes brilliant women good at what they do and the tools they use to stay that way.
p.p.s. Tell me in the comments: what is your Busy Season FOR? I want specifics. And send me your fall recipes, I have a new kitchen situation and big plans.
Alexis Barber is a lifestyle creator and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s the author of Too Smart For This, a guided journal for ambitious women. Support her work by following along on socials, subscribing, purchasing the book here, or reaching out for consulting on the creator economy and consumer brands at hello@alexisbarber.com.
Alexis, the sentence about your nervous system having one data set for wanting something this badly gives the whole essay its emotional stakes. If the last high-intensity season taught your body that ambition ends in collapse, this fall can create a different memory: demanding work can coexist with pleasure, boundaries, quicker recovery, and enough capacity left to recognize the life you are building. The evidence you gather may matter long after Q4, since future opportunities can arrive with a wider range of possibilities than the crash your history taught you to expect. I’m grateful for how candidly you let the prior burnout sit beside the excitement of this new season, especially while reflecting on Dolly’s life and the joy she carried into serious work.