Ever feel like you're drowning in tasks, yet still not moving the needle in your business? You’re not alone. In this episode, Carly and Joe unpack that all-too-familiar solopreneur overwhelm—when everything feels urgent and there’s zero breathing room.
They break down how to prioritize when your to-do list is screaming at you from every direction, using the Eisenhower Matrix, tips from Getting Things Done, and a little “delegate, automate, AI” magic. If you’re stuck in constant hustle mode, this episode might just be the breath of clarity you need.
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Episode Transcript
Carly Ries: Feeling buried under a never ending to do list? We've been there. In fact, we were there just last month. In this episode, Joe and I unpack the chaos of juggling launches, deadlines, and platform updates, all while trying to breathe. We share real life insights on how to prioritize when everything feels urgent.
We explain how the Eisenhower Matrix and David Allen's Getting Things Done method can save your sanity. And we offer practical tips for buying back your time through delegation, automation, and process fixes. If your day feels like one giant fire drill, this one is for you. You're listening to the Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries and my cohost Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one.
We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone.
So Joe, for the past few months, I feel like we have been in it. We have had so many top priority tasks to get done. In fact, there was like, I don't know where to go right now. So within a matter of weeks, we had a launch. We've been working on the website, our we've been updating our platform behind the scenes, and we've been writing a book that had strict deadlines.
And I feel like now that we're coming up for a little bit of air from that, we still have a lot that we need to get done, but I feel like we can kind of step away and breathe a little bit from what it was a month ago.
And think. And feel like, wow, that we maybe should have done it this way, but we are so busy, we're focusing on this thing that we didn't do it that way. And it's so fresh enough where it's like we can speak to it and be relatable about it. But I wanna talk about how to prioritize tasks when everything seems urgent. Because I think that's a constant feeling that a lot of solopreneurs have, that everything needs to get done right now.
So you are so familiar with the Eisenhower matrix. Can you kind of explain what that is? Because I think that really helps to paint a picture of how to prioritize in this situation.
Joe Rando: Sure. So people have probably seen this somewhere in their journeys through life, but the idea is it's a quadrant analysis. And what that means is there's if you remember your x and y graphs when you were in high school in algebra, the idea is you've got, something on this one, which in this case is urgent or not urgent. So this is urgent, not urgent. And then this is, not important or important.
So you've got these four squares. So this is, important and urgent, important but not urgent, then you have, not important and not urgent, and urgent and not important. So you've got these four, different things, and it's easier with a picture. Maybe we should throw a link to that in the show notes.
But the idea here is that the tasks fall in one of these squares. and most of the time, you're working on things that are urgent and important. At least I hope so. I mean, that's what you should be doing. If it's urgent and it's important, that's where you should be putting most of your time. And for most solopreneurs, that's where they're putting all of their time, and that's a problem, believe it or not, even though it sounds like you're doing the right thing. And the reason for that is that you have things that are not urgent but are important. So nobody's screaming for it.
There's nothing that's gonna blow up because it doesn't happen, but it's something that is important in the sense of usually working on your business instead of in your business, you know, automating a process that's tedious, hiring a virtual assistant, coming up with a standard operating procedure that's something that's costing you time to rethink how to do every month. Those kinds of things that are, like I said, nobody's, banging on the door to make sure these things get done. But once you do them, you buy more time. You have more time now to spend working either in the business, the important and urgent, or on the business, the important but not urgent. Things that are urgent, but not important.
So the things that got to get done, they're not really gonna, you know, the world's not gonna end. You give those to somebody else. You off load those somehow or automate those somehow. And if they're not urgent and not important, you know, you gotta stop playing Wordle so much. You know?
So that's the general idea.
Carly Ries: I feel like I wanna come up with a jingle for it, like, delegate automate AI. Delegate automate AI.
Joe Rando: This sounds like that schoolhouse rock from way back when.
Carly Ries: Exactly. It's the modern version of that. But I just think people, they work on their business or in their business so much, that they don't see the low hanging fruits of getting some of these tasks off of their plate that aren't I feel like the ones that are urgent and important are the ones that only they could be focusing on. Because those and hopefully the revenue generators.
But everything else in that quadrant, or in that matrix, like, who can you give that to? You just said it, to delegate and outsource. But I think that's a really important thing that people put on the side, and they're like, one day I'll do this. But they don't realize that they just invest that time right now. It can help them out so much.
Joe Rando: Right. And that's the biggie. so the way I think about it is, you need to work in the business. You need to be doing those important and urgent things most of the time. But carve out, I don't know, ten, fifteen, 20%, you know, 10% of your time.
Just say, every day, I'm gonna spend forty five minutes working on something that is gonna make the business better when it's done. And you can really very quickly find yourself it's the one way to buy more time. Right?
Carly Ries: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, then also, David Allen, I think he talked about this in Getting Things Done, which circling back to like to the beginning of LifeStarr, it was a huge, center point for the company. But he also says, focus on those big things, but also, if something will take you two minutes or less, just do it. it may not be urgent. Right. It may not be important. But it's mental weight that you're carrying around because you know you have to do it, so it's just dragging you down. If it takes two minutes or less less, even if it takes five minutes or less, in my opinion, just do it. get it off your plate so you don't have keep worrying about it and thinking Right.
Joe Rando: Because the mental energy of having to put it someplace where you will not lose it to come back to it is not it's not worth the investment. If it's bigger than that, then you're better off. If we're gonna go into you know? Because, I mean, getting things done is certainly a very powerful way to manage tasks. And the idea there is you capture everything in an inbox or inboxes, and then you decide, you know, is it actionable?
If it is, if it's less than two minutes or five minutes, whatever you think, do it. If it's not, then you either schedule it for some time in the future, basically putting it on a list that says, you know, to do or delegate it to somebody else. And in which case you have somebody else doing it. And that's a really powerful way to kind of maximize productivity because, you know, one of the things that I think people spend a lot of time on is figuring out what to do. Right?
So okay. I just finished this. What do I do now? Oh, and now they gotta go in, and they gotta think look and say, oh, I probably should do this. And if you have that list and you can look down the list and go, you know what?
The way I'm feeling right now, this is the thing I think I wanna do because I'm in the right frame of mind for that, and it's important. Crank it out. It can be really helpful. So, yeah, getting things done, that list. The other thing he has since I wanna be complete is you got the list of things that you've asked other people to do.
He calls them waiting fors. So you say, hey, Carly. Can you write this blog? And I put it on the list. I go, blog about, you know, AI and from Carly.
So now when I talk to you next, I go, hey. Where's the blog about AI? So it really, makes life easier than having to try to remember all this stuff.
And so that's another powerful way to be, you know, prioritize tasks and to be productive.
Carly Ries: Yeah. But I think the moral of the story is just take a step back and see if you are just bogged down with task after task and you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, there I will say, there are phases of solopreneurship where you're gonna have a lot of urgent important tasks. I feel like that was the situation we were in a month ago. We also knew that there was an end to it.
We knew the book was gonna be due by this date. We knew once everything was launched, the launch would be over. we knew there was light at the end of the tunnel. So I think it's okay to have those periods of everything seems important and urgent. But if that's your daily life,
Then you really need to take a step back and ask yourself, doing these because you need to or because you think you should? Are you working with the right clients? Did you take on too many clients? And it's a phase, fine. If it's not, do some work.
Joe Rando: Let me just add one more to that. One of the things I have seen many times, and that is things are not being done right somehow. Something's broken about your process, which then causes you know, you have to put out a fire. And when that happens, I learned that the only thing to do in that case is to invest the time to figure out what went wrong and figure out how it never happens again. If you do that, if you and that usually involves creating standard operating procedures for you and anybody that you're contracting to help you.
But if you do that, if you fix these things each time something breaks, over time, it turns into a machine, and it again, another thing that buys you time because, you're basically taking these things that are extremely urgent a lot of times when something breaks, and now you've got that important and urgent way in the corner there. Like, you're not gonna be doing anything else until this is done, and you turn that into something that doesn't even happen. So now it's easier to prioritize tasks once you fix those things. I think that's just an important thing to keep in mind that I think a lot of people come across but don't necessarily react to properly.
Carly Ries: For the listeners, you're not alone. Every solopreneur goes through this phase. It's kind of a trial and error, especially when you're just starting out of figuring out how much you can take on and how much you can't. So just know you'll get there. We're all in this together, and thank you so much for tuning in.
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