The Pasta Bowl Problem
December is full, but you don’t have to be
There’s a familiar feeling that shows up for a lot of people this time of year, and it tends to hit leaders especially hard.
For me, December starts to feel like a bowl of pasta. Hear me out.
We’ve all had that moment, a few forkfuls in, when you glance down and somehow the bowl is more full than when you started. A shrimp has appeared out of nowhere. You don’t remember there being broccolini in here. And when did that extra breadstick show up on the rim?
None of this makes sense, and yet here you are, fully committed to getting it all down.
That’s what late December feels like.
Work deadlines stack up. Year-end conversations resurface. Everything gets framed as “can we just squeeze this in before the end of the year?” At the same time, personal commitments pile on. Family stuff. Social stuff. Obligations you care about, and others you feel oddly guilty saying no to.
Underneath it all, there’s a quiet pressure humming that everything should be wrapped up neatly by December 31. As if the calendar demands closure, and starting the new year with anything unresolved somehow counts as failure.
A lot of capable people look at that bowl and turn the frustration inward.
Why do I feel so behind even though I’m working this hard?
Why can’t I get ahead of this?
Did I make a mistake thinking I could handle this role, this pace, this whole thing?
I hear that question often, especially from frontline people managers, where the fork really does meet the bowl. Sometimes it’s just capacity. There is simply too much coming at them at once. Other times, it turns into something heavier, a quiet questioning of capability.
They’re leading people, processes, and decisions in roles they were never really trained for. It can feel like everyone else got a handbook they somehow missed.
Here’s the part I think matters.
Most leaders aren’t overwhelmed because they’re bad at leadership or missing some innate manager gene. They’re overwhelmed because they were never taught how to lead when things get full, ambiguous, and time-bound.
They were promoted for competence and reliability, then dropped into systems that reward responsiveness while quietly punishing pause. Empty space starts to feel suspicious, as if the leader with the most meetings by December 31 wins some invisible prize.
They absorb an unspoken belief that a “good” leader gathers every opinion, builds maximum consensus, and personally juggles everything without complaint. It’s an idealized version of leadership that looks noble on paper and quietly burns people out in practice.
I was reminded of this years ago in a meeting with a senior leader I respected.
We were stuck. Confident opinions were flying. Almost no one was listening. The conversation kept looping without moving forward. About thirty minutes in, the VP stood up and said, “Okay, meeting adjourned. If all we’re doing is sharing opinions and not landing on a decision, we’re going with mine. I’m the one who has to defend it later anyway.”
Then he walked out.
At the time, it felt abrupt. Later, it felt instructive.
What he showed me was that leadership isn’t about always having the answer. It’s about creating clarity when none is emerging and accepting that the weight of the decision will land on you anyway. Avoiding the call doesn’t actually make it lighter.
That same principle applies to how we handle our days, especially when the inbox is overflowing, notifications never stop, and your phone starts to feel like a liability.
One calming shift is learning to separate urgency from importance. Loud doesn’t mean deserving of your attention. Many things that feel urgent need action, but not your action.
Pause long enough to ask what actually matters today, and where this request fits relative to that. If something truly needs attention now, decide deliberately what comes off the list to make room for it.
If it needs action but not your action, that’s delegation. For many new leaders, this feels uncomfortable because everything used to be their personal responsibility. As leaders, they’re often handed things because they’re the contact point, not because they’re meant to execute every task themselves.
Another shift is recognizing that not everything needs to be decided collectively. Consensus can be helpful. Clarity is almost always more useful. When progress stalls, making a reasonable decision and owning it often creates more calm than waiting for perfect alignment that may never arrive.
It’s also worth questioning the December 31 deadline most of us carry around in our heads. The date is real. The pressure we attach to it is mostly invented.
Carrying something intentionally into the new year isn’t failure. It’s often good judgment. Leadership includes deciding what waits and what doesn’t, and being clear about what made the cut and what didn’t.
None of this requires becoming a different person or feeling calm all the time. It’s about changing a few defaults so you’re not fighting the same battles on repeat.
Being more deliberate about what you pick up, what you put down, and when you stop arguing with the bowl and accept that you’re probably full, or at least full enough.
If any of this resonates, try one small experiment over the next couple of weeks. Delegate one thing you’ve been holding out of habit. Pause once before reacting to something “urgent.” Or decide, on purpose, to let one thing cross the year boundary and see what happens.
If this felt uncomfortably familiar, I put together a short Leadership Load Check that helps distinguish between a temporary crunch and a structural leadership problem that won’t resolve on its own. It’s designed to give clarity, not prescriptions. Take the 2 minute Load Check and then let’s talk if that feels useful.
