Hey Reader,

Today I want to talk about why you can be busy every single day and still go nowhere.

I spent a year building my first business, Breadcrumbs. It was supposed to replace LinkedIn, but it never broke $2k/mo.

And trust me, I was cranking the whole time.

Here's what not to do!

How to Build a Tower on Sand

I launched Breadcrumbs to help professionals find careers they are passionate about.

Here's how I blew my time.

• Formed my C-Corp
• Opened a business bank account
• Set up my website (two years of iterations on that thing)
• Built a product nobody asked for

It all felt like being an entrepreneur.

In the right situation, these can matter a lot. But I skipped all the high-priority tasks because

• Competitor research felt like a waste.
• Talking to customers felt slow.
• Selling to customers felt scary
• Building a grandiose product was dopamine-rich

Then, a year later, I launched a product. No one used it, and my bank account was dwindling.

I was getting shit done, just the wrong shit lol.

Busy is not the same as aimed

I had no plan, no roadmap of what was actually blocking me; no priorities.

I did the things that gave me the most dopamine (a common theme in my mistakes).

Not the things that I needed to do.

And I paid the price.

• Wasted a full year of my life
• Had to tell people why things weren't working
• No revenue
• No visible progress
• Clients who don't care
• That slow drip of feeling defeated
• My confidence took a hit

And this is exactly what I teach a lot of my clients. If you lack a clear goal and a list of blockers, then you're wandering.

You're going somewhere; it just might not be where you want to go.

Let me explain the theory of constraints & how to prioritize.

Your business is a hallway with one locked door

Think of your business as a hallway with a bunch of doors.

Right now, only one is locked; everything else is already open.

The only way to get to the next stage is by unlocking the locked one, or the bottleneck.

ADHDers love exploring open doors. It feels productive and fun, but this is where you get stuck.

At the start, the locked door is usually: does anyone want this? So you go talk to people and find out.

Once people want it, the door changes. Now it's: do they stay? Otherwise, you're pouring clients into a leaky bucket.

Once they're happy, it changes again. Now you need more people.

At first, I thought it was a straight line for every entrepreneur.

• Solve product,
• then marketing,
• then you're done.
• You are rich now.

But often, you'll cycle back to tackle similar problems.

For example, marketing starts with chatting to friends and family. Then, it may grow into creating a YouTube channel.

When I realized this, I saw the progress that I had always wanted.

• At Breadcrumbs, that looked like me hitting $1k MRR
• At ScatterMind, that looked like me scaling to $10k/mo

In summary,

• There are a finite number of constraints between you & your business goals
• Focusing on an open door or the wrong constraint waste time
• If you never take the time to identify the right door, it'll take even longer to find it.
• A previous open door might look like your current locked door

Here is the pitfall most ADHDers miss.

Most ADHDers fail because they're focused on the wrong door.

Many ADHD entrepreneurs think their bottleneck is a business problem. But usually it's related to ADHD.

Five things block an ADHD entrepreneur from business success.

1. Execution: doing the thing you said you'd do
2. Stability & Consistency: doing it long enough to matter
3. Prioritization: doing the right thing
4. Value generation or Product: making something worth paying for
5. Demand generation or Marketing: finding people to pay for it

Most people only ever talk about 4 and 5. That's what the neurotypical business world talks about, so we copy it.

The first 3 is where ADHDers struggle. If you can't do the first 3 well, you'll never solve 4 & 5.

For example, say your goal this week was 10 new customers. Friday comes, and you have zero. It's easy to say the idea is bad, there's no demand, or nobody wants it.

But did you

• Actually talk to anyone? That's execution.
• Try for more than 2 days? That's consistency.
• Spend your time talking to customers or building a product? That's prioritization.

If any of those are a no, your idea isn't the bottleneck. You haven't completed the minimum requirements​

Let me show you how you to figure out where you are.

Do this today

Start with paper. Here's a template!

1. Write down your goal. Where are you actually going?
2. Write down where you are right now. Be honest, not kind
3. List everything standing between those two points
   1. If you list the first 3, solve those first
4. Circle the one that blocks the most; that's your locked door or bottleneck
   1. If you're unsure, perform a 5-whys​
5. Break your bottleneck down into smaller pieces
6. Put it somewhere you cannot avoid looking at it

Then work only on that one until it opens.

When progress stalls, don't jump straight to "the idea is bad." Ask:

• Am I doing what I said I'd do?
• Am I doing it long enough?
• If not, why? Am I tired? Scared? Bored?

I'm building out ScatterMind Library where I share all the constraints I've solved. It's new, so please provide me with feedback and check back periodically.

On top of that, I built a product, ScatterMindOS, to ensure I execute consistently & prioritize.

• I put my sprint goal at the top of the screen so I never forget what I'm working on
• An execution score (below the pink box) that tells me if I'm working on the right thing.
• It also tracks my sleep, so I can see how it affects my execution
• The tool acts as a feedback loop, so if I'm working on an open door, I don't waste too much time.

If you would like access, reach out! I'm slowly onboarding people.

Effort with no aim is just Wasted Time

• Prioritization is the difference between being busy & getting what you want
• The locked door moves. Reassess every two weeks.
• Most of the time, the real gap is execution, consistency, or prioritization.
• Doing the boring stuff earns you the right to do the fun stuff.