10 Reasons Why You Can’t Get Anything Done

Many entrepreneurs are super creative. But sometimes organization and getting things done aren’t part of their strengths. Many of the clients I work with struggle with this, and it’s come up a lot in the past few weeks. So if you’re one of those who have stopped and wondered why can’t I get anything done lately? I have a list of 10 reasons why you can’t get anything done to help you get yourself focused and start taking action.

Before getting into the list, if you are also interested in knowing what’s your #1 business growth blocker, I recommend you take the quiz below.

The first possible reason why you can’t get anything done is that you’re not setting intentions. In order to accomplish something, you have to have an intention for it. If you just sit down and you want to try to get work done, but you don’t really know what you want to do or why or how you want to feel as a result of the work that you do, then it’s going to be really hard to get the work done.

I was working with a client recently who’s working on a quiz for her business. And we’ve been taking quite a while to accomplish some of the steps in the quiz process. Part of the problem is not setting an intention. If you don’t have an intention set for what you want to happen from creating something for your business, then likely you won’t get that energy back in the form of abundance. I always recommend setting an intention first. It’s super critical to getting things done. 

The second big thing about why you can’t get anything done is time blocking in advance. It’s very important to time block. Time management is crucial when you’re trying to achieve success in your business. Like I said, if you just sit down and try to work on something, you’re going to spend half your work time thinking about what you want it to work on instead of actually working on it.

I recommend time blocking up to two weeks in advance in your calendar or more if you can. A lot of people forget things like when you want to stop working to have dinner with your family, household things that you might want to take care of, appointments that you have, driving kids places, picking up kids from places. That takes a lot more time than we think it does. So block it out in your calendar. That’s actually time that you’re not available to work on your business. 

Then block in time in your calendar time that you are available to work on your business. I recommend putting one-hour blocks for yourself. 

The third possible reason why you can’t get anything done is you’re not keeping a list in a way that is conducive to getting things done. I recommend using something like the Evernote app or your iPhones note app. When keeping lists, I recommend having a to-do work list, to-do personal list, and a note called scratch. Kind of like a scratch pad. What you would do is as you have things that come up that you want to do, write it down in one of those lists.

The other day when I asked somebody how they keep track of things, she replied, “I’m just praying I remember.” And, if you’re like me, the problem with that would be you might not be able to remember everything like we once were able to. And no matter what your age is, remembering everything is challenging when you have a lot in your brain. 

So take the time to jot things down on the list. You can put them into your project management system, or however you keep track of things, later. So when you’re out and you remember “I needed to do this thing” or you have this great idea when you get out of the shower about what you want to do with the client, how you want to help them grow their business, write it down in your notes for safekeeping. 

The scratchpad is really helpful when you’re on calls or when you’re in a situation where you don’t have time to put it in the place that you really want. Put it on the scratchpad and then transfer it later.

Another reason why you can’t get anything done is you’re probably opening emails on your phone and not solving them, and maybe spending time scrolling on social media. I’m not going to lecture you on when and how to use social media. Just be aware of how much time you’re spending on social media and decide if it benefits you or not.

But with emails, I like to follow the rule that you only handle it once. So when you get an email, don’t open them on your phone. Schedule a time in your calendar when you can open your emails, answer your Voxer messages, your DMS, whatever it may be. Don’t just do it randomly all day long. Because it’ll distract your energy from what you really want to focus on.  

I recommend you don’t open emails on your phone, open them on your computer. But if you are going to open them on your phone, make sure that you are able to handle them at that moment and get them done.

That leads me to my next reason you might not get anything done. Another rule I follow is that if it takes less than two minutes, I do it now. For example, if you buy something from the store, like shampoo, and it needs to be brought in the bathroom upstairs, don’t put it on the stairs to be taken up to the bathroom later. Put it in the shower right now while you have it.

Use that strategy for everything that comes to you. If you get emails, and it’s your time to look at emails, answer them right then. Send the document they need, give them the information they need. If it takes less than two minutes, it doesn’t go on your list. Just get it done. 

So another reason why you can’t get anything done might be that you’re not doing the weekend plan ahead. I call it the weekend plan ahead, but you can decide whatever day you want it to be for yourself. I usually do it on Sunday, where I look at what I’ve scheduled for the week. And I see areas where I may have difficulty and areas where maybe I didn’t schedule the lunch break for myself. I need to think ahead and have something prepared. Oftentimes what happens is the space where I have blocked out time to work on my own business gets over full. And I need to move that to another place. 

So I highly recommend doing the weekend plan ahead and reviewing it. Do  I have everything on here? Did one of my kids tell me that they needed me to do something on a certain day and I didn’t have that in my calendar? Do I need to add travel time to get to and from places? Make sure that you know what to expect. It’ll help you feel so much more prepared. And then you can move things to places where it may not work. 

Along those same lines, another thing that you might not be doing that’s making you not get things done, is the day ahead preview. So at the end of every day or first thing in the morning, look at the next day and see where you need to make an adjustment. Time blocking and calendar management is all about adjusting. It’s about pre-scheduling as much as you can. And knowing that you’re the owner of that calendar. A lot of people get blocked with this and they feel like they don’t want to commit to things or schedule things. So they just don’t do it at all. That’s not really successful and doesn’t really help you move your business forward. 

You’re the owner of your calendar; you are the owner of your time. Planning ahead for your time is freedom. It’s not locking you into anything. It’s choosing how you want to spend your time, and then giving yourself the grace and the time to look at it ahead of time and say, does that work for me? Does that match my schedule? 

The next possible reason why you can’t get anything done is that you don’t have a system for tracking when you’re busy. Like I mentioned before, I keep a scratch note to keep track of what’s happening during the day. At the end of the day, I can then transfer it to the right places such as Asana for project management, or a to-do list of personal things I need to get done. 

So, design a system for yourself that works for you! And then decide how you’re going to use that information. Where are you going to transfer it to? Some people use a strategy like, never go to bed with your kitchen messy, you know, always make sure never go to bed with an argument with somebody. Create a sort of rule for yourself that feels right to you. For me, it’s when I end my workday, I’m going to make sure that everything that’s a task that needs to get done gets put in the right place so that I don’t have a huge list that I have to face in the morning.

What happens so often is people don’t block the time out, or they don’t follow the plan that they set and they beat themselves up for it. And they end up giving themselves more work to do. Just think about that. Does that make sense? Is that logical? If you’re not able to get done what you had originally planned, is adding more for yourself actually going to help you get more done? 

The answer is no. So be realistic for yourself. I said earlier, I recommend one hour time blocks and I’m sticking with that. Don’t block out more time for yourself to get work tasks done. Break it up. Even if you’re going to work for three hours on something in your business, break it up into one hour time chunks. The first hour, I’m going to outline XYZ. The second hour, I’m going to record videos, the third hour, I’m going to do this portion of it. 

Break it down for yourself and don’t be so hard on yourself. Give yourself some grace. Time management, scheduling, and calendar blocking is all about flexibility. It’s training your brain on flexibility and helping you refocus on what really matters to you. So don’t forget to give yourself a little grace when you feel stuck and when you can’t get anything done.

And the last reason on the list of 10 reasons why you can’t get anything done is that you are not moving things that you don’t get done into a new place on your calendar. Instead, so many people just create new things for themselves to get done. And that’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make. 

If you time blocked for something that you think is important and will help you move forward, but you don’t get it done when you had planned, go ahead and move it. That’s a really high level problem solving skill that you need to employ for yourself in your business. If I blocked out time on a Tuesday to work on a new marketing initiative for my business, and I had to fill that time up with a rescheduled client meeting or something else, then I need to move that time to another place. Use that strategy for yourself when you do your weekend preview and your daily preview. If there’s something that needs to get moved, make sure that you move it, and you’ll start to be able to get things done. 

So, there you have it. 10 reasons why you can’t get anything done.

If any of them resonates with you, then I’m sure you’ll find this guide to maximize your efficiency helpful!