The Real Reason Your High Impact Projects Stay on the Backburner
As a business owner, you are most likely clear on what your high-impact projects are. The ones that you want to prioritize. You know those initiatives… They are on your vision board, on top of your annual goals list, your team can even say what they are. By definition, they are the projects that will make the most significant difference for your clients, your legacy, your bottom line and the longevity of your business.
In fact, most days you probably set out to focus mostly on those initiatives. Then, as you step into your office, you get the emergency text from a client with a fire you need to extinguish. Your first meeting turns from one hour into two. During that meeting, you accumulate five unread texts and two voicemails. Finally, you settle in to get some deeper work in. A glance at your email, and it's flooded with requests, questions, and "just a quick favor" messages that all feel impossible to ignore. You look up and it's 2 pm.
The high-impact project? It remains untouched, just like yesterday and last week. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Because if you are like most business owners, two things are true. The whirlwind of tasks and disruptions are easier to tackle, and the high-impact project feels big, overwhelming, and maybe even a little scary.
Afterall, that project (that you know will change everything), the one that's been in your head for years, is HARD TO START. You might tell yourself you don’t have time, or that you aren’t sure where to start. And while that feels true, the underlying issue is that it's an energy problem. And here is the thing about that energy problem: if the desire for this project is already in you, the resistance will be too. You simply cannot move through that resistance on an empty tank.
Your Resistance Is a Signal, Not a Stop Sign
These projects — important to your business and your legacy — whether it's launching a new line of business, hiring a team, or creating SOPs to scale, have one thing in common: they come with massive resistance for the founder. Mental obstacles and a voice that says, ‘who are you to do this?’ or ‘This will never work’. Taking action in the presence of that voice, while simultaneously managing your business operations, emails, and client demands, requires you to be operating from your absolute best energy.
On the flip side, the good news is that if you have resistance to it, this means you are headed in the right direction! The biggest indicator of whether this will have the impact on your business that you envision is the size of your resistance. After working with business owners for two decades on strategic initiatives, I can tell you that the sooner you get the distractions and competing priorities out of the way to dive into that which your intuition (as the Founder) is leading you toward, the more rapid your success.
Protect Your Time & Attention
The first step is to identify the top ‘offenders’ hijacking your time and attention. Let’s do it, take a pen and paper now and jot down the top distractions and shaky boundaries that eat away at your precious time and attention. Not sure? Glance through these examples to get your brain moving and your sneaky saboteurs will surface (trust your gut). Typical time-stealers; scrolling, over-delivering for clients or at home, too many browsers open, perfectionism (hello, reading the email 7 times before it goes), hesitance to automate or delegate, needless meetings, working out of your email inbox, replying to messages (DM, Slack, text, etc.) immediately. Now that you have your top 2-3 offenders, finish this sentence - “I could gain ___ hours back in my day if I set _______________ boundary with myself or others.” Trust yourself here. Nobody knows where your time is leaking better than you do, and that inner critic who notices every flaw? They're actually your best asset for this exercise.
When you start reclaiming that time, something starts to shift. You feel more like yourself again. You rise back into the strategic, visionary parts of your business that are your highest and best use. But protecting your time is only half of the equation. Because to truly finish what is calling to you, you need more than hours back on your calendar. You need to show up to those hours in your most potent, clear-headed, fully charged energy. That is what makes the difference between staying reactionary and becoming truly transformational. Here is how to find it.
Fuel Your Energy or Forget It
For one week, take note of every activity, person, environment and type of work that fuels your energy and every one that drains it. In other words, note every time you feel energized or “filled up” in your day and when you feel the opposite. Why is this important? Show up depleted and you will struggle to hold your boundaries and push through the resistance that accompanies high-impact projects. The goal is to “forget” (delegate, delete, or at least minimize) the drains, and proactively plan in the things that fuel you. Your energy fuel might look like going for a walk outdoors, eating nutritious food, or collaborating more on projects if connection fills you up. Eliminating a drain could look like delegating spreadsheet work to a Virtual Assistant or saying no to client scope creep. When you delegate the tasks that drain you, you stop being a bottleneck in your own business and step back into your role as the visionary driving it forward. That is when the real work can begin.
Reps Before Results
Nobody walks into a gym on day one and benches their max weight. You build to it, one rep, one session, one week at a time. Your high-impact project is no different. Yet most founders approach it expecting it to be nearly finished already, frustrated that it isn't done when they haven't yet taken a single dedicated step toward it. That's like expecting to lift heavy without ever having done the work to build the strength. And yet, even knowing this, founders find ways to stay stuck. Some common traps are spending more time engineering the perfect plan than actually executing it, or strategy hopping every time a new approach shows up in your feed. The truth is, the plan always changes anyway. The next right step only reveals itself once you are already in motion.
This is how you build your execution muscle - bite-sized, consistent action. Start by asking what are some possible action steps to get this finished? Instead of writing "create all SOPs" on your to-do list each day, brainstorm all of the possible steps to finish your process documentation, then pick a few small actions (30-minute focused sessions) and start there. For instance - zoom or loom screen-record ONE process. Then, the next day, type up ONE template email that you routinely send to add to a client onboarding SOP. Think, very small chunks of the full project. Lastly, tell someone what you're committing to. According to goal-setting researcher Gail Matthews, you become 65% more likely to follow through the moment you say it out loud. Before you close out for the day, always ask yourself: What is my next rep on my current high-impact project? So you can pick up exactly where you left off tomorrow. The compound effect is real! It builds, session by session, until one day you look up and realize how far you've come.
Desired Future
Keep envisioning your desired outcome. Most importantly, imagine how it will feel when this project is fully implemented or complete. Usually, you can tie that end state to a feeling that you are after. Feelings you know that you will have once the initiative is implemented, like freedom, abundance, or significance. Call upon that feeling often when things get hard.
When you keep putting in the reps and showing up even when it feels difficult, something shifts. You become aligned and activated, lit up in a way that helps your energy find possibilities and solve challenges as they arise. And from that place, synchronicities start finding you. The right people appear. Doors open that you didn't even knock on. That is not magic, that is what happens when your energy matches your vision.
On the other side of this is not just a completed project. It is bigger clients, broader reach, deeper impact. All of it the result of one decision: trusting yourself and that initial nudge. That is how powerful you are as a Founder when you stay out of the whirlwind, operate in your highest and best use of time, and hold the boundaries that protect your energy and attention. That is the Founder's job. And nobody else can do it but you.
Written by:
Kristin Swanson
