Running your own business is brilliant because there's nobody telling you what to do. Unfortunately, that also means there's nobody telling you what to do, and sometimes, I think that's one of the most difficult parts of being a business owner.
I've noticed that I can be incredibly good at dealing with a crisis. Give me an urgent problem, something that's gone horribly wrong or a situation that needs sorting immediately, and I generally know exactly what I'm doing. Give me five perfectly sensible, important-but-not-urgent tasks and ask me to decide which one to start with? Absolute kryptonite.
It's something I've been experiencing in my own business recently. Nothing particularly dramatic has happened. Clients are being looked after, things are ticking along, and there's no enormous project demanding all my attention.
But everything has started to feel a bit... vague, and I think that lack of direction in business is something we don't talk about nearly enough.
Why does a lack of direction in business make everything feel harder?
When we're running a business, we usually have a mixture of urgent work, ongoing responsibilities and longer-term things we want to achieve. Sometimes there's an obvious priority. A client needs something, a deadline is approaching or we're working towards a big launch.
But what happens when none of those things is demanding our attention?
We still have plenty to do. Marketing, client relationships, planning, improving our services and all the other behind-the-scenes things that keep a business functioning.
The problem is that everything feels important, but nothing feels particularly urgent, and now we have to decide. Our brains are constantly trying to predict what's coming next and reduce the amount of energy we spend making decisions. Routines, habits and familiar patterns are useful because they remove some of that uncertainty.
When we lose those anchors, even deciding what to work on can become surprisingly tiring. You might find yourself starting work a little later each day, putting off opening your laptop or spending ages thinking about what you could do without actually doing any of it.
That's certainly what was happening to me, and the interesting thing was that I wasn't avoiding a particular task. I was avoiding having to decide what my task was in the first place.
1. Recognise when you're feeling stuck in business
The first thing I'd recommend when you're experiencing a lack of direction in business is simply to notice it. Which sounds almost ridiculously obvious.
But I think we can be quite quick to assume that if we're struggling to get started, we're procrastinating, lacking motivation or avoiding something difficult.
Sometimes the actual problem is that everything feels fuzzy. For me, it had been a quieter period over the summer. Lots of people were away, the usual rhythm of business had shifted, and I'd lost some of that momentum that normally helps me move from one thing to the next.
Once I recognised that, things started to make more sense. I wasn't avoiding my work because there was something horrible waiting for me. I was avoiding the uncertainty of choosing what to do, and those are two very different problems.
I often talk about how important it is to identify what's really going on before trying to solve it. Because if we're solving the wrong problem, we can put an enormous amount of effort into changing something that wasn't actually causing the difficulty.
So before you start reorganising your diary or questioning your entire business strategy, perhaps ask yourself whether things have simply become a bit vague.
2. Don't immediately create another business plan
I love planning. I particularly love the version of myself who exists when I'm planning. She's incredibly organised, has loads of exciting ideas and apparently possesses unlimited time and energy to implement them all.
She's wonderful 😂
Unfortunately, she's not always particularly representative of the person who has to carry out the plan, and I think this is worth remembering when you're trying to regain clarity in business.
When everything feels uncertain, creating a new plan can be very appealing. It gives us something to focus on and makes us feel as though we're taking control again. But planning and doing aren't the same thing.
Sometimes another big plan just gives us more decisions to make and more expectations to manage. So rather than immediately setting a new goal, I prefer to start somewhere considerably smaller.
3. Choose one thing that genuinely matters
When I realised I was experiencing that vague, nebulous feeling in my business, I asked myself what I could do that I knew was important.
Not what was most urgent, not what would make me look productive, not what I thought a proper business owner should be doing. Just something that genuinely mattered.
And that's how the podcast episode behind this blog came about. I realised what was happening, scribbled down some notes and started recording. Because sharing these slightly strange moments in business, the ones that seem small but can derail us if we're not careful, is an important part of my work.
Recording the episode gave me something concrete to focus on. It meant I'd done something that mattered to my business and the people I work with, and it helped me start rebuilding momentum.
Your version might look completely different. Perhaps it's checking in with a client you enjoy working with, sharing a testimonial or spending some proper, uninterrupted time delivering work you love. The important thing is that you're choosing something you already know has value.
You're not trying to figure out the entire future of your business, you're just giving yourself one useful place to start.
4. Take a break before trying to regain business clarity
Now for the slightly unexpected part of my process. Once you've done that one important thing, I recommend walking away. Go for a walk. Play with the dog. Do some gardening. Read a book. Bugger off for a bit, essentially.
Because when you've been spending days or weeks trying to work out what you're doing, your brain has probably been working considerably harder than you realise. Uncertainty can be exhausting, and if you've been struggling to get started, you might also have been telling yourself some fairly unhelpful stories about why you're finding everything so difficult.
That takes energy too. By recognising what's happening and doing something that matters, you've already interrupted the pattern. You don't necessarily need to follow that with another three hours of business strategy.
Sometimes you need to give yourself enough space to stop thinking about the problem altogether.
Then, when you come back, you might find you're in a much better position to decide what happens next.
5. Clear the mental clutter before setting new goals
One thing I've noticed about myself is that when things feel vague, I become even more of an idea magpie than usual. I collect possibilities. Things I could do. Opportunities I might explore. Interesting things I've read. New ideas for content, services or projects. And each new idea gives me that lovely little feeling of ooh, maybe this is it!
Which is great. Until I have approximately 47 different things I could be doing and absolutely no idea which ones matter anymore. I think this can happen quite easily when we're experiencing a lack of direction in business. We start collecting options because having options feels productive. But eventually all those possibilities create more noise.
So before making a new plan, I like to do a little bit of what I think of as dusting for my brain. I look at everything I've collected and start removing the things that aren't particularly useful anymore. Not every idea needs to become something. not every project we've started needs finishing, and just because we've spent time exploring something doesn't mean we have to keep pursuing it.
I delete thousands of words every month from things I'm working on. Partly because I type quickly and have a lot of ideas, but also because I don't need to keep everything I've ever thought of.
If I did, my online storage would probably bankrupt me. Sometimes it's perfectly reasonable to look at an idea and go, eh, nah, and move on.
6. Find a new direction once you've rebuilt momentum
Only after I've done those things do I start thinking about a new plan. By this point, I've recognised the problem, done something useful, given myself a break and cleared away some distractions.
Now I can look at what's left with a slightly clearer head. Perhaps I need a new goal, maybe my business has changed and I need to rethink some of my services. maybe I need a new routine, a different working rhythm or something that gives my week a bit more structure. Or perhaps everything is actually fine and I just needed to reconnect with the work that matters.
The important thing is that I'm no longer trying to make big decisions from that same vague, uncertain place, and I think that's a much more useful way to approach business planning.
Because sometimes we don't need a completely new direction. We just need to find our way back to the one we already had.
What if you keep feeling a lack of direction in business?
I think it's worth paying attention if this feeling keeps coming back. Maybe you're going through a genuine transition in your business and your old goals no longer fit.
Perhaps the way you've been working doesn't give you enough structure.
Or maybe you're spending so much time responding to whatever comes up that you've lost sight of what you're actually trying to achieve.
There isn't one explanation that applies to everyone, and I wouldn't suggest that my five-step process is some magical solution that will work perfectly for every business owner.
It's simply what I find useful when everything starts feeling a bit nebulous.
You might take one part of it and leave the rest, you might have a completely different way of finding your feet again. What matters is recognising that feeling stuck in business doesn't always mean your business is stuck.
Sometimes the work is still there, the opportunities are still there and the things you care about haven't changed. You've just lost some of the certainty that makes it easier to know what to do next, and that can be something you gradually rebuild.
Finding clarity in business doesn't have to start with a big decision
If there's one thing I'd encourage you to think about, it's whether you're trying to solve a lack of direction by immediately giving yourself more to do. More plans, more goals, more ideas, more things to think about. Because sometimes the most useful place to start is considerably smaller. Notice what's happening, find something that matters. Do that thing.
Give yourself some space. Clear away a bit of the noise, and then see what you actually need. You might be surprised how much easier it is to make decisions once you're no longer trying to make all of them at once.
Need some help finding your next step?
If everything in your business has been feeling a bit vague lately and you're struggling to work out what's actually getting in the way, this is exactly the sort of thing I help people untangle.
You can book a free Solutions Session with me, and we'll have a conversation about what's happening in your business, where things are feeling difficult and what might help you move forwards in a way that works for you.
And if you'd like to explore the idea further first, I talk through my own experience and the process I use in my podcast Start With Seonaidh.
You can listen here.
