I’ll admit it, I am stumped on a topic for today. Generally, something sparks a blog post. Maybe I hear a client or colleague mention something that interests me and would be valuable to you. Or maybe I see a potential topic posted on LinkedIn or some other social media platform. 

I have nothing today.

Maybe you’ve had days like this as well. I thought we could have a chat just between us and figure out how to work through this situation. 

Procrastinating

We all procrastinate from time to time. It’s healthy. We know we need to do something, but instead we noodle on it. We take a walk, take a nap, make some soup – whatever. Sometimes we get a good idea when we do something else and this gets us moving forward. (I actually talked about that in the interview I did with Karl Staib on his Dig to Fly podcast episode, “The Procrastination Advantage with Catherine Morgan.”) 

To be clear, I am pro procrastination in many cases. Doing “nothing” can be very good for innovation and for our mental health.

New York Times bestselling author and podcast host Mel Robbins says that procrastination is a form of stress relief. 

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I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel a little better about the time I have spent not writing this blog post. 

Planning

Sometimes the issue is that you don’t have a plan. You may have a big goal, or a general direction you want to head in, but you haven’t taken the time to write down a plan for achieving your goal, broken down into tasks with a timeline. 

If you don’t know what you should be doing, it is easy to get distracted and go down the YouTube rabbit hole, or start organizing your closet. 

Or, you may find yourself starting to feel completely overwhelmed. In this situation you definitely need a plan. As Michael Port says, “Overwhelm is caused by not knowing what to do, not by having too much to do.” 

Most entrepreneurs love a good planning session. Mind maps, white boards, and brainstorming are FUN for many of us. It doesn’t even feel like work. At least it doesn’t for me. 

Pushing through

If you’ve given yourself some time to goof off and created your plan, now is the time to get to work. Start by doing one small thing to get you into motion. The first step really is the hardest. 

After that, do one more small thing. 

And then one more. 

I always urge people not to try to do too much, especially at the beginning. It is easy to set yourself up for failure, which is harder to come back from. 

Together we can do this. We can procrastinate a bit, come up with a plan, and then start executing on that plan. 

As you always hear, entrepreneurship is a marathon not a sprint. 

We can do this. 

Photo by Gabin Vallet on Unsplash