Have you ever had those days where look around you and see all of the little projects that you could tackle? Maybe you look at your never-ending to-do list and know that there are smaller tasks that you could easily knock off. We’ve all experienced it.

Looking in my backyard I see 1.5 bags of mulch that I have yet to lay around our flowers. I haven’t tended to the flowers in the front or back in a couple of weeks, often blaming the blazing temperature (it’ll be in the upper 90s-110s this weekend). I have several small projects throughout the house that need to be taken care of from boxing up some books, cleaning the garage, fixing a ceiling fan, and a few other small things. All of these would take no more than 15-60 minutes to accomplish, depending on the project.

But, I continue pushing them off for no real reason.

I am procrastinating.

In thinking about this I realized that it wasn’t for a lack of productivity. I’m continuously searching for jobs, which is my primary focus right now, reaching out and scheduling new guests for the podcast, working on other pieces of content, and more.

I was the invisible hurdle. I had and have no one or thing else to blame.

In realizing that I have begun to knock off these small projects, even if it’s only one per day, which isn’t saying that much given the number of hours in a day. But, in the long run, it helps to accomplish what’s actively on my plate while allowing room for new tasks, as needed, such as dealing with my hot water heater when it decided to recently quit.

Now, you can naturally extend this further into larger projects where you need to break it into their smaller tasks to tackle them, leading them to competition on or under deadline. And some of these may be experimental and that’s ok.

For example, I’ve been talking with friends and thinking through other ways that I can be more helpful beyond the blog, podcast, and newsletter. I’ve considered a private Slack community, one-on-one or one-to-many coaching, webinars, or other ways to connect. Will these be successful? I’m not sure. Are they worth taking a shot? I think so.

But, what if we think about this from a different perspective - not one focused on productivity.

Where else in your life are you acting as an invisible hurdle?

What else in your life are you not taking care of?

It may be in your relationship with your spouse, family, or friends. It may be financial responsibilities such as saving for emergencies or retirement. It could be experiencing life to it’s fullest, creating a page turner as AJ Leon talked about in a recent podcast interview.

Take stock of what’s around you to see where you are acting as an invisible hurdle, decide on how you’re going to move past it, and then get to it!