Decode your energy signals, redesign your calendar, and stay sharp even when you’re running low.
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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation
As the calendar flips and the pace of work accelerates, many accounting professionals find themselves running on fumes. The holidays are over. Travel lingers in the body. Busy season looms. And yet, expectations snap back to full speed almost overnight.
In this Accounting ARC, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, and Liz Mason, CPA, take on a topic many professionals quietly struggle with but rarely discuss openly: how to work through fatigue without burning out—or dialing down performance.
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Their conversation is refreshingly candid, practical, and grounded in lived experience. And it challenges one of the profession’s most persistent myths: that being tired means you’re doing something wrong.
Both hosts open the episode admitting they are exhausted—but not from overwork. Shimamoto is coming off a stretch of nonstop weekends filled with visitors, events, and travel. Mason is freshly jet-lagged after nearly two weeks in London, balancing client work with museums, family time, and international flights.
The point lands quickly: fatigue doesn’t only come from too much work. It comes from full lives.
And pretending otherwise, they argue, is where professionals get stuck—pushing through exhaustion with guilt instead of strategy.
Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution, the discussion centers on self-awareness. What actually restores your energy?
For Shimamoto, it’s gardening—slow, detail-oriented, meditative work that activates focus without mental overload. For Mason, it’s movement: short bike rides, walks before calls, or simply getting outside to reset her brain.
They both agree that copying someone else’s coping strategy rarely works. Naps energize some people and flatten others. Books recharge certain personalities; silence drains others. The key is knowing your signals and responding intentionally.
One of the most practical segments of the episode focuses on calendar design—especially in the days immediately following travel or intense personal commitments.
Mason shares how she intentionally avoids scheduling technically demanding work, performance conversations, or emotionally charged meetings when she knows she’s not at her best. Instead, she prioritizes conversations she enjoys, lighter strategic discussions, or collaborative calls where energy flows more naturally.
Shimamoto builds on that idea with a leadership lens: optimizing when work happens matters just as much as how much work gets done. Productivity isn’t about rigid hours. It’s about matching tasks to energy.
Movement, Nature, and “Thinking While Walking”
Both hosts also describe how walking meetings—when appropriate—help them stay focused when tired. With AI tools now handling note-taking, Mason explains she can walk during calls and stay more present than she would sitting in front of a screen.
Shimamoto adds an observation shared by longtime accounting technologist Randy Johnston: simply putting your feet on real grass can have a grounding effect. Whether it’s science or psychology, both agree it works.
The takeaway is subtle but powerful: productivity doesn’t have to look like sitting still.
Work-Life Balance Is the Wrong Frame
As the conversation deepens, Shimamoto reframes the issue entirely. This isn’t about choosing work or life. It’s about work-life integration—designing both so they reinforce, rather than compete with, each other.
Mason, who has built a fully remote firm at High Rock Accounting, is blunt about it. She takes all her PTO. She travels extensively. She does not half-do things—and she refuses to give up the experiences that energize her.
The discipline, she argues, isn’t saying no to life. It’s finishing work earlier, planning smarter, and communicating clearly so you can show up fully to both.
A Quiet Leadership Lesson
One of the episode’s strongest themes is communication. Fatigue becomes dangerous when it’s hidden. In virtual firms like Shimamoto’s work at Center for Accounting Transformation and IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC, transparency around availability, energy, and boundaries is treated as a professional skill—not a weakness.
If you’re tired, say so. If you need to shift a meeting, explain why. If your best work happens at unconventional hours, design around it.
That level of self-awareness, they argue, is not just good for individuals. It’s essential for healthy teams heading into busy season.
Post-holiday fatigue is not an anomaly. It’s predictable. And as deadlines stack up, ignoring it only compounds risk—to quality, to relationships, and to long-term sustainability.Design your work around how you actually function before exhaustion becomes the norm instead of the signal it’s meant to be.
12 Key Takeaways
- Fatigue is not a personal failure—it is a signal. Post-holiday exhaustion often comes from full lives, travel, and nonstop commitments, not poor work ethic. Ignoring it increases risk; acknowledging it enables better decisions.
- Self-awareness is the foundation of sustainable performance. What recharges one person may drain another. High performers must identify when they think best, recover fastest, and struggle most—and design their schedules accordingly.
- Productivity improves when work matches energy, not the clock. Rigid 9-to-5 thinking breaks down during fatigue. Aligning complex or emotionally demanding work with peak energy preserves quality and reduces mistakes.
- Movement is a powerful cognitive reset. Short walks, bike rides, or time outdoors can restore focus faster than pushing through mental fog at a desk. Walking meetings are often more effective than screen-based ones.
- Nature has a measurable grounding effect.Time on real grass, gardening, or simply being outside helps recalibrate attention and reduce mental overload, even when science cannot fully explain why.
- Post-travel days require intentional calendar design. Scheduling lighter conversations, enjoyable meetings, or strategic discussions after trips prevents cognitive overload and protects decision-making quality.
- Avoid high-stakes or emotionally charged conversations when tired. Performance reviews and difficult discussions demand presence and clarity. Leaders should delay them until they can show up fully.
- Planning ahead reduces the cost of fatigue. Finishing major work early, time-blocking around known low-energy periods, and sequencing tasks strategically allow professionals to maintain both performance and personal commitments.
- Technology can support energy-aware work. AI note-taking tools enable walking calls and deeper engagement, freeing professionals from being tethered to screens when their brains work better in motion.
- Communication makes flexibility work. Fatigue becomes problematic only when it is hidden. Clear communication about availability, energy levels, and boundaries strengthens trust and team performance.
- Work-life balance is less effective than work-life integration. Sustainable success comes from designing work and life to support each other, not from rigid separation or constant trade-offs.
- High performers do not lower standards—they redesign how they deliver. Maintaining excellence while tired is possible through smarter planning, intentional recovery, and disciplined self-management—not by pushing harder.