Hi,

If your shoulders are up around your ears right now, same. If you opened this between four other tabs, same. If you left it unread because you wanted to “set aside time to focus and read” and you’re here a week later, same. (And I’m honored.)

Here’s what I keep coming back to: The people whose job it is to create clarity are drowning in noise. That’s not irony. That’s the assignment.

Earlier today, I set a 15-minute timer to count mine. Eight Slack pings. Fifteen emails between work and personal. Four texts. Nine push notifications from everywhere else. Social media. Amazon. The kids’ school. The calendar reminding me I’m late for the thing I was already late for.

HELLO, NOISE.

And that’s just the noise I can’t control. In the same window, I jumped between four tabs, started a new doc, answered one Slack and ignored two, forgot what I’d opened the doc for, and detoured to Amazon for a school project supply that had to ship in two days.

The world is loud. Our jobs are loud. Our own brains are loud.

I see you. I’ve got you.

This issue is about cutting through the noise we inherit and the noise we make. Not a new framework. Not more. Just less, smarter, and on purpose.

Part webinar, part therapy session, fully worth your time

This was one of my favorite webinar sessions I’ve ever hosted, and here’s why. Regine Nelson and I didn’t beat around the bush or hide behind jargon. We just got into what actually matters. We didn’t ignore the noise. We addressed it.

We talked about how to set boundaries. How to navigate endless change. How to meet expectations that grow every quarter. How to measure comms the right way. How to stay human in a role that can easily consume you. It was part comms webinar, part therapy session. Trust me when I say, you don’t want to miss it. Tune in and catch up if you missed it live!

More pressure, more proof you matter

Spoiler: It’s not just you. This blog post, based on Simpplr’s State of Internal Communications 2026 report, breaks down the workload IC pros are carrying right now. It also outlines how our role is getting more strategic at the same time. Both can be true. Both are.

Read it on a day you have 10 minutes and a coffee. Keep it for the day a leader asks you to defend your team’s headcount or wonders aloud what IC is actually doing. There’s a reason this report keeps landing in IC pros’ inboxes every spring.

When it just happens, that’s the magic

Recognition doesn’t need a program, a platform, or perfect timing. Sometimes it’s a single specific sentence sent at 2:47 p.m. on a Tuesday. This piece looks at how teams are making recognition land without building a whole new system to do it.

It’s a good read for the IC and HR pros who keep getting asked to “do something about culture” with no budget and no bandwidth. You’ll walk away with ideas you can use this week, none of which require a launch plan. Translation: one less thing to overengineer.

ICYMI

More from Simpplr

You’re doing better than you think.

One last thing. We’ve spent this whole issue talking about cutting through the noise, the kind we inherit and the kind we make. And here’s the part that doesn’t fit neatly in a Quick Tip: There isn’t a perfect plan for this. I don’t have the secret sauce for less noise. I don’t have a foolproof way to manage it all.

Same, Moira, same.

This month, let’s do less of the noise-making and more of the noticing. Skip the meeting you already know you don’t need. Send the sentence before reading it again eight times. Close the tab.

Let’s focus on what we can control. Stand outside barefoot and look up to the sky. Send a handwritten note to a friend. Take a long bath. Enjoy coffee without a screen. Laugh more.

You are a person inside this noisy job, and you deserve some of the care you spend all week giving everyone else.

Trust me, you really are doing better than you think.

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