Andrea Michalek

Stop "shoulding" yourself this holiday season.

My word for 2026: Adventure.

What's yours?

Three questions for the end of year:

→ What to START doing?
→ What to KEEP doing?
→ What to STOP doing?

Be brutally honest.

This is from my Saturday newsletter.

If it resonated, you can subscribe → www.leadershipadvantage.xyz/newsletter

Your permission slip to NOT do everything between now and January 1st.

It's ok for it to be business not as usual.

Up and to the right is a simplification of what success looks like, but it never plays out that cleanly in reality.

I learned, very early on, that the path to your ultimate goal is often the "silly path."

It has missteps, turnarounds, and in hindsight, was the harder way to go.

When the idea finally clicks My book didn’t start with an outline. It started with fear. A talk I over-prepared for. And one drawing I couldn’t stop thinking about. That was the moment it became a book I had to write.

www.topularstrategy.com/blog/when-t...

But someone gave me better advice: wait until you have a book burning inside you that you can't not write.
I finally found mine.

This week's newsletter is the origin story behind Beyond Incremental, and a question for anyone circling something that hasn't clicked yet.

My book didn't start with an outline.
It started with fear.
A talk I over-prepared for. And one drawing I couldn't stop thinking about.

When I ask other authors if I should write a book, they usually say, "Don't do it."

If your team can’t move without you…

That’s not leadership. That’s dependency.

Time to shift.

I built a course to help you do exactly that.
✅ Communicate vision clearly
✅ Build leadership systems
✅ Lead without being the bottleneck

Today’s the last day for Black Friday offers:
www.leadershipadvantage.xyz/offers/blac...

The fix isn’t “better time management.”
It’s not blocking out more deep work.

It’s shifting from being the keeper of clarity
to building shared clarity your team can own.

Your calendar is full.
Your head is foggy.
And the irony? Your impact is shrinking even as your responsibilities grow.

Especially in December, when planning pressure hits max volume.

That’s the Context Keeper Trap.

You rose fast by bridging gaps and thinking strategically.
Now your team leans on you to keep everything coherent.

Every update runs through you.
Every decision waits for you.

Burnout isn’t just about working long hours.
It’s about carrying all the mental load for your team.

You’re not just leading.
You’re translating. Explaining. Clarifying. Constantly.

I thought being the “glue” made me indispensable.
Turns out, it made me the bottleneck.

A thread for burned-out tech leads stuck in the Context Keeper Trap 🧵

I'm rebuilding my technical leaders advantage course directly on my website, rather than hosting it separately.

Every time I need to set up secret keys for authentication in APIs I feel like I am practicing dark magic.

Is that just me?

#buildinpublic

Technical leaders: want to start 2026 with a breakthrough plan?

Course + live workshop with me on Dec 10.

Black Friday pricing ends Saturday midnight.

→ beyondincremental.com/offers/blac...

📌 Enroll in the Technical Leader's Advantage course here: beyondincremental.com/offers/blac...

Go Beyond Incremental in 2026.

Enrollment is now open for my course + live workshop designed for product and engineering leaders who want to break out of reactive mode and lead with clarity.

Details below.👇

Stop drifting into another year.

If you’re a technical product leader ready to lead 2026 with clarity, confidence, and momentum:

This is your reset.

Black Friday access now open.
🕓 Ends Nov 29
🔗 beyondincremental.com/offers/blac...

I haven’t had that experience. What is your project?

5 Keys to Product Team Success - Topular Strategy 1. Work that Matters Is your team mission-driven? Can your team answer what the company is trying to achieve and how they get there? At my first startup, I had an offsite where I wrote questions about the company on index cards. I had my developers each pull an index card and respond as if

Clarity
Curiosity
Customers
Camaraderie
Coordination

Unlock the 5 keys to team success: topularstrategy.com/2022/06/08/...

The biggest leadership breakthroughs rarely come from adding more tactics.
They come from seeing the blind spot you’ve ignored for years, and finally naming it.

Take the 5-minute breakthrough leadership assessment, and see where you rank: beyondincremental.com/assessment

Career Planning Framework Feeling stuck or uncertain about your next career move?The Career Planning Framework helps you cut through uncertainty and design a career that fits your life - with the purpose, balance, and pay that makes sense for you.This guided workbook helps you clarify: the work that gives you meaning, how you like to spend your days, and the compensation that supports your life.What You'll DiscoverMost career advice focuses on climbing ladders or building skills, and even worse, we often default to what others think success should look like.But the best career decisions come from understanding what you actually need across three essential areas.This framework helps you step back and examine what you really want from your career, so that you can be confident about where you are headed and why.💡 Find Your PurposeWhat makes work meaningful to you?Move beyond generic mission statements to identify the specific impact you want to make and clarify your "why" for showing up each day.🧠 Understand How Y

You can chase meaning.
Or you can chase money.

Or you can do what most high-performers forget: Balance the equation.
thatandream.gumroad.com/l/3p

The Beyond Incremental framework helps leaders bring together:

✨ People: how you multiply impact
⚙️ Performance: how you turn clarity into results
🔥 Passion: why your work truly matters

When these three align, the impossible starts to look inevitable.

🚀 Big news: BeyondIncremental.com is live.

What started as a 48-hour build turned into a two-week evolution: a real-world test of the Breakthrough Leadership Framework.

It’s not just a website. It’s a living lab for how leaders create momentum.

I went back and modified all the commits, and set up my project rules so it doesn’t do it anymore.

Yep. It does it by default. Crazy, right?

Do you leave "co-authored by Claude" or your AI tool of choice in your commit messages in git?

I'm not.

It seems like it might invite IP issues that I don't need.

Are others doing the same?

#buildinpublic #vibecoding

Entrepreneurs are not afraid to hustle.

There is nothing more fun than seeing a group of potential customers and figuring out how you can serve them.

Does that make me an outlier or an adrenaline junkie?