OffScript Advent – Week 3: Redesign

Week 3 of OffScript Advent is about redesigning.

Not in the glossy, start-over sense. But in the quieter, more honest way it actually happens. After you’ve named what isn’t working. After you’ve stopped blaming yourself for systems that were never built to hold you well. After you’ve admitted that carrying on as before isn’t sustainable.

This week’s posts are about what becomes possible once you stop disappearing inside work that matters, and start asking what you need in order to stay in it. Here’s everything from Week 3, in one place, in case you missed a day or want to read it all together.

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Day 15

For a long time, I thought redesign meant certainty.

A plan.
A brave decision.
A clean break.

What I’ve learned is that it usually starts much earlier than that.

It starts when you stop forcing the current shape to work.
When you admit that coping is taking more energy than changing ever would.
When you let yourself imagine something different without immediately shutting it down.

Redesign isn’t about blowing up your life.
It’s about stopping the habit of negotiating yourself away.

Today’s prompt:
If your work and life didn’t need to make sense to anyone else yet, what would you quietly want more of?

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Day 16

It feels heavy right now.

Not just personally. Globally. You can feel it sitting behind everything.

When you work in charity or social impact, that weight doesn’t stay abstract. It gets carried. Alongside deadlines, family life, end-of-year pressure. You’re still expected to show up steady, capable, as if none of this is happening.

So people feel tired in a way sleep doesn’t touch.

I don’t think this season is asking us to push through or detach from what we care about. I think it’s asking us to stop turning the cost of caring into a personal failure.

Rest isn’t giving up. It’s how you stay human when the world feels like too much.

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Day 17

Redesign, for me, didn’t start with a decision to change my life.

It started with noticing how my shoulders were tensed.
How I felt on edge before meetings that were meant to be routine.
How much time I spent softening emails, anticipating reactions, holding things together so nobody else had to.

I didn’t stop caring about the work.
I stopped assuming that my body, my energy, and my needs were the acceptable collateral.

That changed how I worked day to day.
What I said yes to.
What I stopped explaining away.

Eventually, it changed where I lived.

The impact stayed.
I just stopped disappearing inside it.

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Day 18

Two years ago I quit my full time job and went freelance.
Fifteen months ago, we moved to Goa.
Fourteen months ago, I trained as a coach.
A year ago, I started coaching alongside my consulting work.

None of it felt bold at the time.
It felt practical. Necessary. Like the next honest step.

Looking back now, I can see how much shifted once I stopped ignoring what I already knew.

Sometimes change doesn’t announce itself.
It just waits for you to stop arguing with it.

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Day 19

Not everything that feels heavy is yours to fix.
Not everything that feels hard means you’re failing.

Sometimes it’s just a sign that something needs to change.

You’re allowed to notice that.
You’re allowed to listen.

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Day 20

It’s not too late to change your life.

Even if you’ve spent years in the same sector.
Even if people rely on you.
Even if you’ve invested time, energy, identity and care into the path you’re on.

There’s a name for the feeling that keeps many women stuck here:
the sunk cost fallacy.

The idea that because you’ve already given so much, you have to keep going –
even when something no longer fits.

But past investment isn’t a reason to stay.
It’s simply part of how you got here.

Redesign doesn’t erase what you’ve done.
It builds on it.

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Day 21

One of the biggest lies women in mission-led work carry is this:

“I’m stuck.”
“I’m not strong enough to change my life.”

But look at what you’ve already done.

You’ve worked inside under-resourced systems.
Made decisions with real consequences.
Held responsibility without authority.
Kept going when things were complex, political, emotionally heavy.

Redesign doesn’t require a new version of you.
It asks you to recognise the strength you’ve been using everywhere else.

You don’t need to become braver.
You need to stop pretending this part of you doesn’t count.