I don’t know about you, but it has been B.U.S.Y. Big projects we’d been planning for dropped, all at the same time. Marketing campaigns needed troubleshooting. BD initiatives needed managing. And somewhere in between all of that, there were still articles and posts to write.
Everything got done. Because it’s my job.
Then a friend texted me: “Hey, haven’t heard from you in months. Everything okay?”
I hadn’t dropped a single work thing. I’d dropped her.
That’s the part nobody warns you about when they tell you to “just push through” a busy season. The tasks with deadlines survive. The things without deadlines are the ones that quietly disappear, and usually those are the relationships.
The real problem
We think of busy as a time management problem. Too much to do, not enough hours, need better systems. And sure, some of that’s true. But if you’ve ever come out the other side of a brutal stretch and realized you ghosted a client, missed a friend’s milestone, or went silent on a referral partner who used to hear from you monthly, you already know the real problem isn’t your calendar.
It’s that busy has a sorting function built into it. When capacity gets tight, your brain automatically triages toward whatever has a deadline attached and away from whatever doesn’t. Relationships almost never have a deadline. So they lose, every time, unless you build something that overrides the default.
I’ve watched this happen to me and to clients in nearly identical ways. The work gets done. The people get quiet. And usually nobody notices until months later when a referral doesn’t come, or a client doesn’t renew, or a friend stops reaching out because they got tired of being the one who always initiates.
What actually keeps things from dropping
Here’s what I’ve learned, mostly by dropping things first and figuring out the fix after.
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Decide in advance what’s non-negotiable, not in the moment. If you wait until you’re buried to decide what matters, busy will decide for you, and it will always pick the loudest deadline over the quietest relationship. Before a known busy stretch hits, I ask myself one question: who am I not willing to go dark on for the next month? I write down three to five names. Not a vague “stay in touch with people,” an actual list.
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Lower the bar for what counts as staying in touch. This was the biggest mindset shift for me. I used to think reaching out meant a real conversation, face-to-face, coffee, a proper catch-up. During a busy season, that standard guarantees silence, because you genuinely don’t have time for that. So I lowered it. I’ve found a 15-minute Teams or Zoom call is equally effective. Instead of meandering, you stick to what’s top of mind, what they have going on. At the very least, a one-line text. Even a comment on their post. Forwarding an article with “this made me think of you.” None of it is impressive. All of it keeps the thread alive.
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Put it on your calendar, or it doesn’t exist. I live by my calendar. If a task isn’t there, it doesn’t get done, and reaching out to people is no exception. So I create what I call no-minute meetings, quick blocks on the calendar with no agenda except being a reminder. When one pops up mid-day, I don’t overthink it, I just shoot off a quick email or text to whoever’s on my list.
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Build a five-minute buffer around your actual work, not instead of it. I don’t mean block off an hour for “networking.” I mean, when I finish a client call, I give myself five minutes before opening the next task to send one message to someone I haven’t talked to in a while. It’s small enough that busy-me will actually do it, which is the whole point.
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Tell the people who matter that you’re in a busy stretch. This one felt awkward the first time I did it, because I didn’t want to come off as self-important. I quickly got over it, and it’s become one of the most useful sentences I use. Something like: “Heads up, I’m heads-down on a few things this month, so I might be slower to respond, but I didn’t want you to think I went quiet on purpose.” That single sentence does more to protect a relationship than a weeks-long gap followed by an apology ever will.
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Do a quick pass before the busy season ends, not after. Right before I come up for air, I look back at who I meant to reach out to and didn’t. Not to spiral about it, just to catch it early. I put it in the calendar! The gap between “I meant to” and “I actually did” is where relationships quietly die, and catching it a week late is a lot easier to repair than catching it three months late.
How to actually do this, this week
If you’ve got a busy stretch coming up, or you’re in the middle of one right now, here’s the version of this you can use today.
Write down three names. People you’d genuinely regret losing touch with if this season went sideways.
Next to each name, write the smallest possible gesture that counts as staying in touch with them specifically. For one person that might be a text. For another it might be liking and commenting on something they posted. It doesn’t need to be the same for everyone.
Set a recurring reminder, once a week, for the length of your busy stretch, that just says “one message.” Not “network.” Not “follow up.” Just: one message, to one person on that list.
And if you already know you’re about to disappear on someone, send the heads-up sentence now, before the silence starts, not after they’ve already noticed it.
Where this actually leads
The people who are best at relationships aren’t the ones who never get busy. Everyone gets busy. The people who are best at this have just stopped treating relationship maintenance as something that only happens when there’s spare time, because spare time is a myth during a real crunch. They’ve built it into the busy itself, at a scale small enough to survive contact with a packed week.
I still think about that text from my friend. Not with guilt exactly, more like a reminder. The work always looks like it’s the thing on fire. It rarely actually is. The quiet stuff is what burns down while you’re busy putting out the loud stuff, and you usually don’t smell the smoke until weeks later.
So before your next busy season hits, or if you’re already in one: who’s on your list of three? And what’s the smallest possible thing you could send them today that would let them know you didn’t forget?
If you want the deeper version of this, the actual referral-partner check-in system I use so client relationships never go quiet even during my most brutal stretches, that’s exactly the kind of thing I break down for paid subscribers. Might be worth a look if this hit close to home.
As always, if you think of someone who might benefit from this feel free to forward it on.
