Stress is hard. But it’s not impossible to manage.

Everywhere I go these days, people in the nonprofit sector are talking about how stressed they feel –and with good reason! It doesn’t matter if you’re working on the front lines, the back office, or the executive suite, everyone is struggling.

Of course, that struggle varies from one type of organization to another.

If you’re in social services or healthcare, you’re facing a tidal wave of need with a puddle of resources.

If you’re in the arts, you’re struggling because patrons have traded the cost of tickets for a tank of gas.

If you’re in the environment or research, you’re battling existential threats while breathing the fumes of evaporated funding

And if you’re working for a public interest law organization…just know that I’m praying for you.

The stress is unending, and it’s exhausting. I feel it. It’s not just the daily grind — it’s the constant political chaos that seeps into our brains like background radiation.

The good news: there are things we can do to help ourselves and each other. One of the most important is learning to unplug.

I recently read a fantastic piece by Cal Newport, an MIT‑trained computer scientist and evangelist for digital minimalism. His work is refreshingly simple: the more we flit from message to message and beep to beep, the less we’re able to think deeply. One of the most important things is learning to unplug.

He offers this beautifully basic rule: When you’re at home, keep your phone charging in the kitchen. If you need to check something, walk to the kitchen. If you’re waiting for a call, turn on the ringer. Suddenly you can eat dinner, watch a show, or talk to your family without the twitchy urge to glance at a second screen.

The same principle applies at work. If we’re glued to Slack, drowning in email, and asking AI to help us triage the chaos, we’re not actually focusing. My husband likes to say, “Imagine if the phone had been invented after email. People would say, ‘You mean I can dial a number and talk to the actual person I want to reach?’”

Unplugging isn’t about ignoring your mission. It’s about protecting the brain you need to carry it out.

For nonprofit leaders, that means:

• Setting communication norms that don’t require 24/7 vigilance

• Encouraging real conversations instead of endless email chains

• Protecting time for deep work — for yourself and your staff

• Normalizing boundaries so people don’t burn out trying to save the world

Unplugging won’t eliminate stress. But it will give your team the mental space to think clearly, act strategically, and remember why they signed up for this work in the first place.

And in a sector built on passion, clarity is one of the greatest gifts we can give each other.

It won’t eliminate stress. But it will give your brain a fighting chance.

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Pat Libby is a change management consultant working principally with nonprofit corporations. She is author of The Empowered Citizens Guide: 10 Steps to Passing a Law that Matters to You, Oxford University Press, The Lobbying Strategy Handbook, second edition, Oxford University Press, and Cases in Nonprofit Management, SAGE. She has served as an academic, senior executive, board member, and consultant to innumerable nonprofit organizations and foundations for more than three decades.

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