Busy Isn't the Same as Moving Forward
You can have a productive week and still feel like you got nothing done.
I was talking with a founder recently who's building a membership business. He’s a smart guy, and he’s clear on the model and the market.
He’d shifted marketing focus to networking and making connections in his community. It’s work that had proven it could fill his pipeline.
He told me that by Friday, he'd look at his task list and feel a sense of failure.
His “internal scorecard” was still calibrated to busy-ness..
✔️More tasks on the list
✔️More items checked off
The conversations actually building his business didn't register as real work by his old standards.
Most founders I work with intellectually understand that strategic conversations are higher-value than grinding through a checklist. They've read the books. They get it.
But there's a strong action bias that's hard to shake.
The dopamine hit of checking a box is real, and sometimes other work doesn't produce the same hit.
And if you're not careful, that discomfort pulls you right back into the weeds.
So I was pretty candid with this founder: "It's not about the number of things. It's about the right things."
The volume of tasks he was completing wasn't the measure anymore.
What mattered was whether the right work was getting done. And right now, the right work was building a pipeline.
But until he believes that, a calendar fix alone won’t last. So we worked on two things at the same time: a plan for his weeks, and the belief system underneath it.
Both had to shift together (that's what I call the Parallel Process™, and it's the only way the change actually holds).
With just a few conversations over a few weeks, I could tell he was valuing the work differently.
He was bought-in to the networking. He told me the sense of accomplishment was there. And his pipeline reflected it.
More progress toward his goals in 30 days than in the previous six months.
That does not happen by accident.
That's what changes when your “scorecard” changes.
Here’s a good way for you to check yourself: Take a look at your last week. How much of your activity actually moved your business forward?
The goals you have set determine what belongs at the top of your priority list, which is where you should be spending most of your time.
If you aren’t doing that currently, it’s time to make an adjustment. Book a call with me and we'll work through it together.
