The roles you have outgrown. The load nobody sees. The yes you gave before you thought.
Keep it all.
Put it down.
Keep the ambition.
You carry every role, every responsibility and all of the mental load — including the parts that stopped serving you. The longer it goes unnamed, the more it costs you — your evenings, your health, the people who need you. I'll help you sort it out now.
Which Burnout Pattern Are You Stuck In? →Take the 2-minute quizI've spent nearly 30 years in professional settings, including 15 years leading design and research at scale inside Fortune 500 companies, and I'm trained as a coach through an ICF-accredited program.
I also know this pattern from the inside. After experiencing clinical burnout myself, I made the leap to build a healthier relationship with work, driven by wanting to be fully present as a single parent to my son. That choice changed how I coach. I'm not here to help you slow down or want less. I'm here to help you keep your drive and ambition, and build a way of working that doesn't cost you everything else to sustain it.
Nicole Johnson · executive coach
Burnout rarely looks like falling apart.
The problemInvisible load
The tracking and smoothing over that appears in no job description.
Outgrown roles
The fixer, the safe pair of hands. You earned the seat; now you are the ceiling.
Fear of dropping
If you stop carrying it, who are you? That is where the work starts. We work through who you are outside of work and how you want to relate to it, sustainably.
The thing that made you good at this is now being used against you.
The self-awareness that used to be your strength gets called too much. The reliability that made you promotable starts sounding like a warning. The exact trait that got you praised for years is suddenly the problem, and no amount of skill-building fixes that. What actually helps is learning you don't have to disappear into the role to be good at it.
You call yourself the umbrella. The force field. The calm one in the room. What happens to the barrier when it's the one that's cracking?
What we put down first
The approachThe First 90
Ninety days of 1:1 work to put down what is no longer yours and build the version of success you actually want.
See the program →Nicole operates at the intersection of energy, systems, and agency. She brings executive-level pattern recognition to moments of transition, helping you see clearly where your environment is supporting you — and where it isn't. For high-performing women navigating complexity or change, her work offers something rare: sustainable ambition grounded in structural self-trust.
— Ranjini M | London, UKNicole meets people in their humanness and helps them show up to be their best self professionally. Her powerful questions help you reflect and stretch into where you want to be. Thanks to her guidance, several of us landed promotions. But the real win was understanding where and how we could bring value to the table in any situation.
— S.L. | Seattle, WAWorking with Nicole gave me real accountability for putting my health back on the priority list. She gave me recipe ideas that got me out of a rut and eating more protein and fiber, plus small movements I could build in without beating myself up for not being able to go all in.
— K.C. | Austin, TXI am so grateful for my session with Nicole. Her deep listening and insights helped me tremendously with my struggle of lack of clarity in my career path and home life. Nicole guided me to remember what my options are, and what motivates me. I had beautiful moments of clarity thanks to her coaching. Thank you Nicole!
— A.P. | CaliforniaNotes from the practice
Short letters on dropping more and holding less, plus first word on new programs and events.
Essays on burnout in the modern workplace
Longer-form writing on how work got like this — from the inside and the other side.
Read on Substack ↗Beyond the Title
The most important work you'll ever do has nothing to do with your job.
Save a seat →UX Burnout: A Working Session
Get clear on where the misalignment actually is — and leave with your own Drop / Hold page.
Save a seat →