She told me she'd done something she hadn't managed in a year.

An honest-to-God four-day week.

Then she admitted how it felt. "I was knackered."

Not relieved. Not refreshed. Knackered.

By the Friday morning, she was on an early train out of London, crying from sheer tiredness.

A complete stranger asked if she was all right.

Yikes.

"I need to remind myself that people are lovely," she told me afterwards. And they are.

But it had taken a stranger on a train to notice how much she was carrying.

Partway through our session, she said something I wrote down word for word.

She sighed: "What I'm realising in working with you is that the only thing that's stopped my progress is me."

She'd noticed a pattern.

Between our sessions, she'd forget how many of the barriers around her were self-built.

Then, each time we spoke, she'd see them again, clear as day.

Not her boss. Not the organisation. Not the project.

Her. Not taking the permission she'd been granted after her surgery.

The permission had arrived months ago. She just hadn't consciously given it to herself.

So she made a decision.

She's going to tell her bosses that she'll see out her agreed time at four days a week, and she won't be returning to five.

Not now, and not for at least the next three years.

Four days for the job.

And the fifth for something she described as "work for myself, but fun."

Not a collapse. Not a catch-up.

But instead, something that feeds her.

What struck me wasn't the arithmetic.

It was how she talked about it.

Now there was no apology in it.

No "if that's all right with everyone".

She'd stopped framing it as a favour she needed to earn.

She was simply describing how she intends to work.

Full stop.

I see this often with the senior women in STEM I coach.

The flexibility exists on paper. The policy is there.

Sometimes, as here, it's even been explicitly offered or negotiated.

And they still don't take it.

Somewhere along the way, working at full stretch became proof that they deserved to be there.

Stepping back feels like conceding an argument, even when nobody else is arguing.

It's a close cousin of letting your work speak for itself.

The hours become the evidence.

And if the evidence, your hours, shrinks, surely the case against you grows?

It rarely does.

As I explore in why "be more confident" is the wrong advice for senior women, the women I work with seldom lack confidence.

What they often lack is permission.

And they're usually waiting for it from the wrong person.

If you've been offered flexibility and haven't taken it, it's worth asking who you're still trying to convince.

Your boss may have moved on long ago.

Situations, outlooks and even atmospheres around work, change.

The only one still keeping score might be you.

If you're weighing up a conversation like this one, and want to get it right, I'd love to talk.

Email me at suzanne@doylemorris.com to arrange a chemistry call.

If this resonated, I write about moments like this every week, the ones senior women in STEM recognise immediately and hadn't quite named yet.

Subscribe at suzannedoylemorris.com