Does this sound familiar? There’s something that you just can’t face or get around to doing in your own business that you help clients with all the time. Maybe you’re great at managing other people’s projects but get overwhelmed at the thought of your own. Or maybe you’re a marketing expert that can easily advise clients on where they are going wrong with their campaigns, but just can’t see the issues with your own?
There are lots of projects that need to be done in your own business including bookkeeping, marketing, admin and planning. True, you can pay someone else to handle some of those, but sometimes I find clients have real expertise in one of these areas but struggle to apply that skill to their own business.
This goes beyond the old cliché of the builder who never finishes building his own house because there’s always client work to do. For a neurodivergent business owner, this can be more like a mental block, and one that can feel a bit embarrassing, too.
It’s infuriating, but why on earth does it happen? And is there anything you can do? Let’s take a look at what might be going on here.
Switching between tasks
If you’re neurodivergent, you may find it hard to switch your attention between the many different types of task that are needed to run a business. You might be very focussed on the client work and unable to easily switch to looking at your own finances, for example.
It’s not just the type of task you need to switch between, either (e.g. social media to invoicing and back again). It could be switching roles in your business from being the admin person to being the CEO. It’s easy to get stuck in one of these roles and neglect the others.
Ideally, you would not be playing all these roles yourself and would pay someone else to do the tasks you’re not good at or don’t have the time or focus to do well. But maybe you simply don’t have the money for that now. And planning what to outsource and who to outsource it to is a project in itself.
Lack of structure
When you work for someone else, you have structure such as a clear brief, a defined outcome and accountability. When working on your own projects, there’s nobody making you decide on a a precise goal, a plan and a deadline date. As a self-employed person you can do it pretty much any way you like – as long as it pays the bills and doesn’t break the law. Being able to create your own structure can be especially hard if you’re neurodivergent and that’s going to make it hard to ‘unlock’ all the skills and knowledge you use with clients.
Delayed or lower reward
When working for a (good) client you’ll get regular rewards. These could be conversations, money – if you ask for a deposit or staged payments – or feedback on you ideas or designs, for example. With your own projects there’s far less feedback and much more quietly keeping going until something works or is finished. Even then, it may only make your life easier – which is fantastic – but may be less emotionally rewarding than a happy client and a paid invoice.
It’s easy to put projects like this on the backburner. If you have ADHD in particular, you may struggle with this lack of regular reward.
Self esteem and emotional load
Fear of failure, fear of visibility (especially for marketing activities) and perfectionism can all weigh you down if you’re neurodivergent. If you have ADHD rejection sensitivity dysphoria can also be an issue. ‘What if this marketing method doesn’t work?’ and ‘But I hate networking!’ This all adds to the effort needed to start and complete a project for your own business.
Just too tired
And finally, if you’ve spent most of your time and energy on working for your clients, maybe you’re simply tired and out of time. And as clients pay your invoices then the client work tends to win.
As you can see, working for clients and working on a project for your own business are actually very different. So what can you do to make it easier to work on your own business?
Work out a schedule
You can reduce the cognitive load by working out what needs doing in advance and making sure you allocate the time to do it. If you’re thinking ‘oh no, not time blocking again!’ I’m not suggesting this alone will solve the problem. But unless you physically have the time to do that task in your week then it won’t happen. So it’s a good first step. It also gets you to look at how you’re spending you’re time so you can trim out the activities that take up time but are low value.
This can also reduce task switching because you can bunch similar tasks together in your calendar. Unless you find this too boring, in which case you can separate them out.
Manage your overwhelm and self-esteem
Remember to take time for activities that make you feel better such as exercise, talking to a friend, reading, gaming, watching a movie.
Talk to a friend (business or personal) who can reassure you that you are totally capable of this task.
If perfectionism is a problem, set some boundaries for yourself such as being strict about spending 2 hours on the task rather than letting it extend to all day. Or deciding in advance that 2 proofreads of a document is enough and not allowing yourself to do 5.
Can’t work out what the block is?
If you really can’t get started on your business project and can’t work out why, try my Why can’t I get started? quiz.
Make it a project
Rather than feeling ‘oh no, I need to do a better job of my marketing, I must around to it sometime’ you could treat it like a client project. Obviously you don’t need to write a full brief, but by writing some brief goals of what you want to achieve and by when, it might feel less overwhelming and give you structure.
It could be a very small project, too. Such as contacting 3 previous clients in the next 2 weeks for a catch-up to see if you can help them again.
Externalise your brain
There’s sure to be a lot of information in your head, so getting it out of there and should reduce the load on your brain. Everyone works slightly differently, so there’s no perfect way to do this. So start with whatever is bothering you most about this project – remembering things, getting organised, worry about not completing things on time, just getting started – then find a way to get it out of your head and onto paper or into an app. This could be a calendar, a notebook, a planner or a notes app like Google Keep.
There are many, many apps you could choose, but keep it simple for now and pick one that solves something that’s bothering you, rather than one that promises to have cool features.
Make your own reward
If there’s no client to give you rewards for making progress on your own business, why not make your own?
How I can help
All of the above ideas sound easy enough, but applying them can be a lot harder. Here’s how I could help you.