This week I found myself doing something I often tell other people not to do.
I was writing, deleting, looking at everyone else’s work and refreshing my own statistics far more often than I care to admit. Every quiet day made me wonder whether I needed a better idea. Maybe a different direction. Maybe a different strategy. It felt as though everyone else had discovered something I hadn’t.
The strange thing is, I recognised all of it. I’ve spent years watching capable, driven people respond to uncertainty by working harder. More hours. More effort. More ideas. Convinced that the next attempt would finally be the one that changed everything.
This time, it was me.
Somewhere in the middle of the week, I caught myself. I closed my laptop and did something I hadn’t done since all this started. I stopped looking at my business as the person living inside it and looked at it the way I would if it belonged to one of my clients.
For years, I’ve walked into boardrooms and helped leadership teams step back from the day-to-day. We stop looking at individual problems and start looking at the whole business. We put the helicopter glasses on. It’s amazing how often the answer becomes obvious once you’re no longer standing in the middle of the noise.
So I asked myself the same question I would ask any client sitting across the table from me.
“What would you tell them if this wasn’t your own business?”
The answer came almost immediately.
The problem wasn’t my writing. It wasn’t my ideas. It wasn’t even the disappointing engagement I’d been staring at all week.
The problem was that I hadn’t built enough structure.
Every day started with a new decision. What should I write? What should I post? Should I change direction? Was this article good enough? Was LinkedIn saying the right thing? Every quiet day became another opportunity to question the entire strategy.
I realised I wasn’t searching for a better plan.
I was searching for reassurance.
That’s a very different thing.
So I stopped trying to solve the problem with more effort and took my own medicine. I built the same thing I’ve spent years helping organisations build. A structure.
One day each week where the thinking gets done. Where the articles connect to each other. Where the Notes continue the conversation instead of starting a new one. Where LinkedIn has a clear role. Where every piece of work supports the business instead of competing for attention.
The days in between no longer need to be spent searching for inspiration. They’re there to execute decisions that have already been made.
The irony isn’t lost on me.
I already knew all of this.
I simply hadn’t realised how difficult it is to apply your own advice when you’re the one emotionally invested in the outcome.
Most of us think we need more willpower. More discipline. More motivation.
I’m no longer convinced.
I think we need better structures.
Because discipline was never actually my problem. I had plenty of it. What I was missing was something that could carry me on the days my confidence couldn’t.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit reply. I read every message.
Warmly,
Pia