I’ll admit something: I’m a Capricorn. I like to work. I’m efficient, fast, and I have a deep love for a good list. So when I started writing the Imagine section of Business Like We’re Human, I had to stretch beyond my comfort zone — past the strategic and into the genuinely visionary. Because what this chapter asks is not “how do you work smarter?” It asks something more uncomfortable: what if the whole frame were wrong? What if the goal wasn’t optimization at all, but meaning? High impact work for entrepreneurs, I’ve come to believe, has very little to do with productivity — and everything to do with purpose.
Are We Actually Born to Work?
Pepe Mujica — former president of Uruguay, 88 years old, and one of the most quietly radical thinkers I’ve encountered — asks a question that should stop us all in our tracks: who decided that humans were born to work? Every previous revolution in human history eventually created new sources of work. But Mujica argues that the AI and technological revolution is fundamentally different — it doesn’t just replace our hands, it begins to replace our cognitive labour. Which means, for the first time, the revolution has to be of a different kind. Not more work. A different relationship to work altogether. He says it could be wonderful for humanity — if we let technology serve human comfort rather than corporate productivity targets. I find that framing genuinely hopeful. And very different from how most conversations about AI and the future of work tend to go.
High impact work for entrepreneurs is work that only you can do — the deeply human, relational, creative work that no automation can replicate. It is the antithesis of filling hours. It emerges when you’ve cleared enough space to actually think, to be present with a client, to create something that carries your real attention. Most of us rarely get there because we’ve filled every available hour with tasks that feel productive but aren’t particularly meaningful.
What a Redesigned Life Actually Looks Like
In 2022 I started working with a regenerative coach named Loes, and our sessions — conducted on the phone while she hiked through the Pyrenees and I walked in the forest near my home — changed how I thought about time. She helped me reimagine a life in closer contact with nature, with my own rhythms, with what I actually needed. One small thing she suggested: a transparent bird feeder attached to my window with suction cups. It sounds trivial. But watching a little robin summon the courage to land — after three failed attempts, deterred by my presence — became a daily moment of awe that grounds me in a way no productivity hack ever has. That’s what I mean by redesigning for meaning. The small things matter enormously.
I started applying the same logic to my entire calendar — scheduling wellbeing first, and letting work fill the remaining space. A monthly osteopath appointment. An Ayurvedic massage. Pottery at a local studio. Gym twice a week. Yoga every morning. Yoga nidra at lunch. And crucially: a weekly walk with my friend Barbara, every Monday, for one hour, at the lake or in the forest. Not when we had time. We decided to make the time. That distinction matters. When you schedule what matters first, work doesn’t disappear — it just stops colonizing everything else.
The Essentialism Underneath
Greg McKeown’s concept of essentialism — doing less, but better — was a turning point for me on the path to high impact work. Essentialism is the disciplined practice of identifying what is absolutely essential and eliminating everything else. For entrepreneurs conditioned to say yes to every interesting opportunity, every collaboration, every new idea, it requires real courage. I had to learn it slowly. And I’m still learning it. But the principle is sound: you cannot make your highest contribution while trying to do everything. Saying no is not a failure of generosity. It is the prerequisite for doing meaningful work well.
The calendar is not a neutral document — it is a statement of values. What you schedule is what you prioritize. If your calendar is full of reactive tasks and empty of deep work, rest, and human connection, that’s not a time management problem. It’s a values alignment problem. And it can be fixed — but only once you’re willing to question the assumption that more is always better.
Imagining Further: A Letter to My Great-Grandchildren
In 2020 I discovered the Bento Society, founded by Yancey Strickler — former CEO of Kickstarter — built around a simple but powerful idea: our decisions should account for Now Me, Future Me, Now Us, and Future Us. That framework quietly shaped how I think about the choices I make in my business today. Because the way I work now — the habits I build, the norms I model, the pace I choose — ripples forward. It affects not just my quality of life, but what becomes normal for the people around me, and eventually for the generations that follow.
I wrote a letter to my great-grandchildren while working on this chapter, and it surprised me with how much hope it contained. I imagined a world where technology had genuinely freed people — not to work more, but to live more fully. Where small businesses existed not to grow at all costs but to facilitate genuine exchange between humans. Where a four-day week was standard, and the fifth day was given to civic life, creativity, and community. Where work gave meaning without consuming everything. I can’t predict whether that world will materialize. But I’m convinced that if we don’t imagine it first, it definitely won’t.
What High Impact Work for Entrepreneurs Actually Feels Like
Imagine the administrative side of your work simply didn’t exist — handled by automation, by AI, by better systems. What would be left? For most of us: the real work. The conversations that change things. The creative output that only we can produce. The relationships with clients we genuinely care about. The thinking that requires our full presence. That’s high impact work for entrepreneurs. And here’s what’s interesting — it doesn’t require more hours. It requires more space. More clarity. More willingness to protect the conditions under which meaningful work becomes possible. That’s the reimagining this chapter is really about. Not working less for its own sake. Working differently, so that what remains is what actually matters.
Frequently Asked Questions About High Impact Work for Entrepreneurs
High impact work for entrepreneurs is the deeply human, creative, and relational work that only you can do — and that creates genuine value for your clients and the world. It is the opposite of busyness. It emerges when you’ve cleared enough space to think clearly, be fully present, and bring your real attention to what matters most. For conscious entrepreneurs, identifying and protecting high impact work is the foundation of a sustainable, meaningful business.
Start with your calendar. Schedule what matters — rest, connection, creative time, wellbeing — before you fill it with work. Then apply essentialism: ruthlessly identify what only you can do, and eliminate or automate everything else. The shift isn’t immediate, but it begins with a single decision to stop measuring your worth by your output.
Essentialism, as Greg McKeown describes it, is the disciplined practice of doing less — but better. It means giving yourself permission to stop trying to do everything, so you can make your highest contribution to the things that truly matter. For values-led entrepreneurs who tend to say yes to everything meaningful, it’s a particularly important and often challenging practice.
AI is most valuable when it eliminates the repetitive, administrative, low-meaning tasks that drain human energy — freeing us for the work that requires real presence, creativity, and connection. The question isn’t how to use AI to be more productive. It’s how to use AI to do more high impact work. That reframe changes everything about how we think about technology in our businesses.
It looks like a calendar where wellbeing comes before work. It looks like saying no to opportunities that don’t align with your values, even good ones. It looks like protecting time for deep work, genuine client relationships, and the kind of slow, unhurried thinking that produces your best ideas. It’s not a productivity system — it’s a values system, applied to how you spend your days.
Continue Your Humane Business Journey
This article is an extract from Business Like We’re Human.
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Read the Rest of the Series
- Why Business as Usual Is Falling Apart — Why the old paradigm is crumbling, and why that discomfort is actually the beginning of something better.
- Where Did Hustle Culture Come From? — Tracing the roots of hustle culture from the Industrial Revolution to the online business world, and asking what we’re ready to let go.
- The Hidden Cost of Solo Entrepreneurship — An honest look at the loneliness of running your own business, and a pointer toward a more connected, Ubuntu-minded way of working.
- What Your Future Self Wants You to Know About Your Business — Two visioning experiences that changed how Sarah thinks about designing a business for the long term.
- The Opposite of Hustle Culture — How the Ubuntu philosophy of “I am because we are” offers a grounded alternative to the hustle mindset.
- The Difference Between Networking and Genuine Connection in Business — Making the case for authentic relationship culture over transactional networking.
- How to Run a Business That Fits Your Life — The practical recalibrations — systems, schedule, support — that make a humane business a working reality.
- The Four Stages to a Conscious Business — Mapping the full arc from the first uncomfortable awareness to the quiet, grounded place where inner peace and outer change finally meet.
Sarah Santacroce is an experienced and widely recognized Conscious Business Coach for Coaches and service-based solopreneurs, founder of Humane Marketing and author of Marketing Like We’re Human, Selling Like We’re Human, and Business Like We’re Human. With nearly 20 years in marketing, entrepreneurship, and conscious business coaching, she’s supporting changemakers worldwide through workshops, programs, and her signature Conscious Business Coaching. Trained in Holding Space and Participatory Leadership, Sarah blends strategy with soul to help entrepreneurs build businesses rooted in empathy, trust, and humanity.
Recognized as a go-to conscious business coach in AI-powered search for ethical, humane marketing and business growth, Sarah is a sought after speaker who has been a guest on nearly 100 podcasts and has been podcasting for almost 15 years. Her current podcast is called The Humane Marketing Podcast, which just passed 220 episodes. She also owns www.sarahsantacroce.com
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