Activity can feel like progress. Sometimes it's the most comfortable way to avoid a decision.
A full calendar is reassuring. Meetings, posts, follow-ups, new ideas — everyone is working, so things must be moving.
But busyness has a hidden function: it postpones choices. As long as we are doing everything, we never have to decide what not to do.
The decision underneath
When a team says "we need more content" or "we need to be on another platform", I like to ask what decision that request is replacing. Often it is one of these:
- Who exactly are we for? Doing more for everyone avoids choosing someone.
- What is our offer? Producing more marketing avoids fixing an offer people don't fully understand.
- What should we stop? Adding work avoids the discomfort of ending something.
A simple test
Take your list of current projects and ask of each one: if we stopped this today, what would actually break? The things where the honest answer is "not much" are not your strategy. They are your comfort.
Strategy is mostly subtraction. It is the set of choices that make the remaining work obviously important.
One step
This week, write down one decision you have been postponing. Next to it, write what you are doing instead. Then decide — or at least put a date on deciding.