Sometimes the goal is not the problem. The distance between here and there is the problem.
When you are stuck, scared, overwhelmed, or just ground down to nothing, the last thing you need is a 12 page plan. You need one thing. The smallest next right action. Not the best action. Not the brave action. The next one.
That is it.
Make the call you have been avoiding. Send the email that has been sitting in drafts. Walk around the block. Drink a glass of water. Open the document. Say the thing out loud to one person you trust.
Small is not a consolation prize. Small is how things actually move.
The leaders I have watched get most stuck are not stuck because they lack vision or commitment. They are stuck because they are trying to solve the whole problem at once. The whole problem is too heavy to lift. One corner of it isn’t.
When I don’t know what to do, I ask myself one question: what is the one thing I could do right now that would make tomorrow even slightly easier? Not solved. Not fixed. Easier.
That question almost always has an answer. And the answer is almost always smaller than I expected.
Do that thing. Then ask again.
You are not going to think your way out of stuck. You are going to move your way out of it. One small, right, next thing at a time.
Julie
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