How To Know What To Do Next
Ever get that feeling of not quite knowing what the next best thing to do is? It might be that you have loads of ideas and can’t decide where to start, or that you know where you want to go but have no clue what to do as a first step. Perhaps you’re overwhelmed with options and can’t find a way through them, even though you feel pretty confident about where you want to go. Either way, building a business really boils down to a series of decisions about how to know what to do next, so getting confident about how to do that makes this whole journey a lot smoother.
It is easy to overthink or get stuck in indecision if you don’t have a strong foundation or you have fears that are pulling at your attention. If you think you’re in either of these scenarios, read How To Be More Decisive or How To Stop Overthinking first. This post is for when you know where you are and know where you want to be, but there is a deep gorge for you to cross to get from one to the other – and while you have a pile of possible bridge-making materials with you, you don’t know which ones to use or where to start.
So much of knowing what to do next is actually knowing what not to do next. Taking away the things that aren’t right leaves behind the things that are more right – and often it is easier to identify these things. So when in your pile of bridge materials there are parts you can’t even lift or things that just look too flimsy, you can disregard them, and focus in on what you really have to use. In real terms, this means giving yourself permission to not use every tool and channel that exists, but narrow your options to the ones that are going to be best suited to get you where you want to be.
The place to start with this is your strengths. When we’re at school our strengths are all well and good but the focus is on improving our weaknesses; spending more time on the subjects that don’t come naturally to try and make sure you’re at least good at everything. This is something we bring into running our businesses too – we take our strengths for granted and fixate on improving our weaknesses with training and courses and books. But imagine if you took that time and energy and instead put them towards honing and using your existing strengths. How much more might you do?
Going back to our pile of materials. Perhaps you’ve always been great at tying knots, so you focus on that, and, disregarding the wooden planks and tub of bricks (for now) pick up the swirl of rope and begin deftly knotting it together to form the basis of your bridge. No need to learn bricklaying or spend a month trying to get your head around how the planks might work – just straight to the thing that is going to get you immediate results.
In your business, this means getting clear on what your strengths are and leaning right into them. Perhaps you’ve always found it easy to write, maybe you’re a great connector or maybe it’s visuals that you can always make sing. Pick around three of your core strengths where you feel most confident. Then, go through your options and ideas and take away anything that doesn’t play to those core strengths, anything that might require you to upskill or learn something hard (you can put these things on a “Not Yet” list to make it easier). If you don’t have options, give yourself some – make a short list of the tasks or actions that best play to your strengths (blogging, networking, photography) and use those as the raw materials for your bridge.
By the time you’re working on your bridge you should have a clear vision of your end point, which again makes it easier to say no to things. What does your vision not include? For me, my vision doesn’t include lots of appointments or travelling for work, so that gives me the permission to not entertain options that would require those things as part of my bridge. If you don’t want them in your ideal future business, don’t include them in your current business. If you want a life that doesn’t involve sawing wood all day, don’t use planks as part of your bridge.
So we’ve refined the raw materials. You have a pile of things that you’re not going to think about right now but can always call on later, and you have a pile of things you feel confident you can make a start on straight away. But before cracking on with knotting the rope, a little bit of a plan is useful: how much rope do you need, what’s the best knot, how far can you go with rope alone?
This is creating a roadmap of how you want to get from where you are now to where you want to be. Working out the milestones you need to hit (half way there, first client booked, course created) and the tiny steps in between each one. Focus on these as being things you can control, what you are putting out rather than what you want to get back; that way you remain proactive rather than waiting for a new client to fall into your lap.
With these milestones and tasks, the bridge begins to take shape. Perhaps you see that towards the end you might need to know a little bricklaying to get over to the other side, but you simply put it in your roadmap and be ready to deal with it when the time comes. Now, you need to tackle that first task; tie that first knot.
Identifying your strengths and building a roadmap based on your creative vision is part of the Apply stage of the Inward Attainment Map, where you give yourself permission and get focused on the work that will most joyfully take you where you want to be. To dive deeper into exercises and resources for this stage of the Map, check out The Trail.
