Episode 3 of Coffee with Kevin - an ongoing series about artistic maintenance and leadership from EnJoy’s founder.

Countering Overwhelm with Clarity: Finding Your Path Forward (Without Losing Your Mind)

I wake up with that delightful pressure-cooker feeling in my chest—the crushing obligation to "GSD" (get sh*t done) in too many directions, with lists that breed sublists like rabbits on fertility drugs.

Let's state the obvious: we're drowning in information that has multiplied like a virus over the last two decades. Not remotely coincidental that this explosion syncs perfectly with smartphones glued to our palms and Moore's Law doing its exponential thing (look it up—it's wild and slightly terrifying).

We're caught in the perfect storm of professional demands, the addictive ego-stroking of checking boxes, and our panicked reaction to (I’m gesturing broadly) everything happening in this blistering dystopia. The result? A seemingly endless parade of "deliverables" marching across our consciousness.

Lately, that's felt less like productivity and more like slow-motion suffocation.

My lightbulb moment of clarity arrived yesterday—while I was dramatically collapsed on the floor contemplating debauchery. It came from my grad school days (Masters in Organizational Leadership, puff puff goes my ego!). The mental model was deceptively simple: "Find the overlap of what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs." I added "and what will pay me" because, you know, capitalism doesn't accept payment in good intentions.

Once I pushed aside my fantasies of throwing it all away for a life of hedonism, I realized those first three elements (love, skill, global need) were already playing a harmonious trio in two creative projects I'd been developing. Despite my excitement, they'd been languishing in the wasteland of "I'll get to it when I finish these seventeen urgent-but-actually-not-important tasks."

But focusing on the potent overlap of these three imperatives was like mainlining motivation. Suddenly, I could see that what I was creating was right, good, and coherent. That realization is a belief worth tattooing on your forearm (or at least repeating like a mantra while breathing into a paper bag). When I added "what will pay me," these projects got strapped to rocket boosters—because like it or not, money validates work and keeps the lights on.

From this grounding, two virtues emerged like phoenixes from my pile of abandoned to-do lists: courage and connection. Courage is required to battle the beast that is Imposter Syndrome. It slithers in, no matter how crystal clear your clarity. It is connecting with others who lift you up. THAT is how vision transforms into reality.

The connection is saying YES to my strength and reaching out to others. THAT is how I (and we) can make vision happen. THAT is resistance to a sense of futility, to overwhelm, to powerlessness. That's how we fight the good fight while keeping our sanity (mostly) intact.

Clarity for the Creative Mind: Tools to Navigate Stress and Decision Fatigue