Hi Reader!
I have a guilty secret I need to share with you.
I have a folder full of projects that are sitting at 50% completed or more on my computer, even more in my Notion, and a couple buried in the pages of a stack of pretty notebooks I use for a few weeks and then forget about. I have five books completely outlined (just did a new one last weekend), two partially written (my Boss Responses book is one of them and the other is fiction), and one so close to done that it's driving me crazy.
They're not junk either. Every single project and book has potential, can help people in some way, and is something I want to share.
I realize admitting all of this while making a living as a strategist might seem like an odd choice. But that’s exactly why I’m telling you.
I didn't leave all of those projects unfinished because I'm lazy or incapable of doing the work. In most cases, I was doing an enormous amount of work. I just wasn't finishing.
Some of the projects aren't finished because I decided to go in another direction at the time. Some I plain lost interest in for the moment. I usually go back to those at some point.
But most of them fizzled because I got stuck in a loop. Maybe you've experienced it? It goes something like this: come up with a great idea, research said idea, create the resource, review and edit, research for the revision, incorporate revisions, edit, repeat.
In one of the better examples of "don't be me, you're better than this" I can offer you, let me show you how the same thing can happen in your business and why you really, really don't want it to.
When planning replaces progress
This isn't a new concept. I'd wager it's happened since the beginning of time. Lucky for us, it's an issue that has some research behind it.
In 2000, Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton published a book called The Knowing-Doing Gap. They looked at a frustrating paradox inside organizations: companies could know what they needed to do and still fail to do it. Knowledge wasn't necessarily the problem. Turning that knowledge into action was.
This is something I see all the time with my consulting clients, but when I look at how it translates into my work it hits me in the feels. I've seen what happens when I have a "great idea," do all of the research, and don't implement it fast enough, only to watch someone else take a similar idea and make bank.
The gap Pfeffer and Sutton talk about between understanding what to do and actually doing it is real. It creates ripple effects in our businesses: missed opportunities, lost profit, hits to our confidence, and lower motivation to pursue the next opportunity.
Preparation isn't bad. It's a necessary part of every business strategy. We should do major strategy sessions and business planning at least once a year. When we have a new idea, we need to make sure we do our due diligence.
We also need to recognize when research has stopped improving the decision and started delaying it.
We don't want strategy and planning to become substitutes for commitment or action.
Have you ever not done something because:
- "I'm still researching." ✔️
- "I want to improve the offer first." ✔️
- "I should probably redesign my website." ✔️ (I'm incredibly guilty of this one.)
- "I need one more opinion." ✔️
There's a check mark beside each because I've said every one of them in the last three months. And they were valid at the time.
That's what makes this so tricky. There is almost always a reasonable argument for doing more research, making another revision, or waiting until the circumstances are better. Any one of those decisions can be perfectly sensible.
Unfortunately, if we let them become the priority, we experience failure to launch. When delays become a pattern, when we keep planning, keep researching, keep asking for feedback, and keep not actually doing the thing, that's when we have a problem.
Why we stay stuck
Potential has never been the hard part. Turning potential into action is.
We get stuck in the planning stage because planning feels safe. It keeps our options open and creates a sense (false or real) of psychological safety.
Doing something, taking action, is a risk that effectively closes some of those options off. Once we put the work in front of another person, they get to respond and we don't get to control what that response will be.
Every time we postpone taking action, our brains fill the gap with imagined outcomes. Sometimes we picture the success we're hoping for. Sometimes we rehearse every possible disaster. Either way, we're reacting to possibilities instead of evidence.
All of that usually happens as some kind of inner monologue. Want a peek into my head?
- I'm writing up my proposal and all of the possible reasons the client might say "no" are running through my head. My credentials aren't good enough. My rates are too high. I bombed the discovery call. They just plain didn't like me. This one is solidly rooted in imposter syndrome and lies I'm telling myself. My clients make decisions based on their business needs, not based on my fears.
- I rewrite the same LinkedIn post 12 times because I don’t want to offend anyone, all because one person told me I was being insensitive three years ago when I shared my experiences. What made that criticism particularly hard to shake was that I had shared real things happening in my life. I know it’s wrong to let other people’s perceptions shape what I think and do, but sometimes it happens. To counteract that, I’ve surrounded myself with people I trust, and when I need a reality check, I send it to them first.
I've heard similar thoughts from many of you. I hear about your fears around pushing back at a client who’s asking for more when they’re already paying peanuts. I hear your concerns about raising rates, trying new ways to find clients when the methods are outside your comfort zone, and changing the way you’re doing things because “they’ve always worked before.”
The problem is that those thoughts feel like established facts when many of them are still untested predictions. The longer they stay in our heads, the more convincing they become.
Fear is one of the underlying reasons we get trapped in these loops in the first place. Not everyone struggles with this, but if you do, you're not alone. Left unchecked, those stories can essentially paralyze us.
Fear isn't just one thing
Researchers who study entrepreneurial fear have found that "fear of failure" isn't one big, generic fear.
In their research, Gabriella Cacciotti and her colleagues identified seven sources of entrepreneurial fear: financial security, personal ability, the ability to fund the business, the potential of the idea, threats to social esteem, the venture's ability to execute, and opportunity costs.
Those fears don't all affect us in the same way.
When we're worried that we might not be capable, or that the idea might not be as good as we think, we're more likely to become passive. We research. We revise. We look for reassurance. As long as the project stays safely on our computer, we never have to find out whether we can actually pull it off.
Fear about what other people will think can have a similar effect. The mechanics of sending a proposal or publishing an article aren't particularly frightening. The frightening part is what happens afterward. Someone can reject the proposal, disagree with the article, balk at the price, or decide we aren't as smart or capable as we hoped they thought we were.
Planning delays that moment. It allows us to keep working without becoming visible.
But fear doesn’t always stop us. The researchers found that some fears, particularly concerns about opportunity costs, can be associated with greater effort and persistence. Fear can inhibit action, but it can also motivate it. Cacciotti and James Hayton offer a more in-depth explanation in "How Fear Helps (and Hurts) Entrepreneurs" if you're interested.
Apparently, "I'm afraid this will reveal that I'm not good enough" can affect us very differently from "I can't afford to keep investing in something that isn't working."
That gives us a better question than simply, "Am I afraid?"
What am I afraid of, and what is that fear making me do?
Am I researching because I genuinely need more information, or because research allows me to delay being evaluated? Is the fear helping me identify and address a real risk, or is it giving me a reasonable-sounding excuse to stay invisible?
It's also not always a straightforward issue. It could be either analysis paralysis or task paralysis, and the two aren't the same thing.
Knowing which one you're dealing with is important because they require different solutions.
Analysis paralysis stalls a decision before you've made it: which angle on that article, which offer structure, which platform?
One of my clients had put off starting a newsletter for months because she couldn't decide where she wanted to host it. After talking through it, we figured out she'd already decided. She just didn't want to commit, because then she had to do the scary thing and put it out there.
Task paralysis stalls something you've already decided on but haven't executed.
This was me with the Boss Responses podcast. I knew I wanted to start a podcast. I knew the format I wanted, who I wanted on it when I started it, what I wanted to talk about, and who I wanted to help. Even after I figured out what software to use, what mic to buy, and where I was going to host it, it still took me two years to take the plunge and just do it.
I couldn't move forward, even though I was ready.
If you're dealing with analysis paralysis, you may need better decision criteria, a deadline, or permission to choose an option that's good enough for now.
If you've already made the decision, more research probably isn't going to rescue you. You need to act on the decision you've already made.
Strategy and execution aren't separate
Strategy gives execution direction, but strategy can't exist in a vacuum. It's refined through execution.
Have you ever heard of the Lean Startup model? It's a methodology that came out of the tech world, and it's built around a build-measure-learn loop: you ship (put something out there) a minimum viable version specifically to generate feedback. It's the tech version of imperfect action, which is a concept I've now fully embraced.
Eric Ries, who popularized the approach, has suggested taking what you think your minimum version is and cutting it in half, then cutting it in half again, because much of what feels essential in the planning phase turns out not to be essential to learning whether the idea works.
That's a hard truth for someone with five outlined books and a mostly finished manuscript to hear. But I know it's right.
A strategy only becomes useful when we do something with it.
- Another afternoon of research cannot tell you whether the offer will sell. Showing it to a potential buyer can.
- Another round of revisions can't tell you whether your message is what your audience wants. Publishing it can.
- Reorganizing the project plan can't tell you whether the resource is useful. Letting someone use it can.
Those experiences help us refine our businesses far more than another round of revisions ever will because they replace assumptions with evidence.
Let's do it
This is one of those newsletters where I'm taking action too.
If you signed up for the newsletter expecting some perfect, has-it-all-together guru, I'm truly sorry. I've been doing this thing right along with you for the last 20 years, but that doesn't mean I know it all. I'm still learning new things every week. Some lessons, like this one, I have to learn multiple times.
So here's our task for the week:
- Pick one stalled project. I recommend the one closest to done, not the most ambitious.
- Figure out which kind of stuck you are. Is there a decision you genuinely haven't made, or have you made the decision and avoided acting on it?
- Mentally shrink the very next step until it feels too small to skip. Instead of saying, "Implement my new marketing strategy," you might say, "Reach out to one potential client on LinkedIn."
- Make sure the step creates contact with the outside world. Reorganizing your folders doesn't count. Neither does researching three more platforms. Send the proposal instead of revising it again. Show the offer to one potential buyer instead of rewriting the sales page. Publish the article instead of asking for one more opinion.
- Set a deadline and tell one person what you're doing and when it'll be done. Add in some accountability. If you want, just reply to this email and tell me. I'll set a reminder to follow up with you.
- Then do it. Even if it's the imperfect version. Whatever happens, you'll have real data instead of internal stories. Data you can use to improve or refine what you're doing.
That, my friend, is how you gather evidence instead of assumptions.
Let's launch
Failure to launch can feel remarkably productive because everything is constantly being improved, optimized, researched, and planned. It’s my comfort zone.
The problem is that planning and progress can feel almost identical, even when they’re producing very different results.
Eventually, the only thing left to do is find out whether we’re right. We have to stop asking, "What if?" and start asking, "What happened?"
That's not always comfortable. I'm feeling a little anxiety even typing it. I also KNOW that it's where the real learning begins.
So, back to the decision we have to make: do you stay stuck, or do you move forward?
I'm choosing to move forward.
I’ve chosen one of my projects to take out of the collection of unfinished work. By August 1, I’ll announce and share that resource. (Keep me accountable!)
I don't know whether it'll work, but that's the point. I've spent enough time wondering what might happen.
Now I want to find out what does.
Want to go with me and get some stuff done?
Cheers,
Treasa
If you already know which project you need to finish but can’t seem to get it moving, that's something I can help you with.
The 90-Minute Strategy Session is designed to help you sort through the ideas, decisions, and unfinished work competing for your attention. We’ll figure out what you need to do to move forward, identify what’s keeping you stuck, and create a plan for getting it in front of the people who need it.
If you're ready to make a bigger change in your business, the VIP Business Accelerator might be the perfect fit. It's 3 months of 1:1 coaching, personalized resources, and accountability to help you gain the momentum you need in your business. Interested? Book your complimentary consultation call today.
