When progress stalls even though you’re capable and trying

You sit down to work with enough time, enough skill, and a clear reason to care.

But instead of starting, you reread notes.

You reorganize a list.


You open the same document you opened last week—then close it again.

Nothing is technically hard.


Yet progress slows anyway.

This isn’t because you’re tired.


And it isn’t because you lack discipline, motivation, or commitment.

What’s slowing you down is something more specific—and more fixable.

It’s energy leakage: the mental cost of carrying unresolved decisions, undefined starting points, and open loops that quietly tax attention before real work even begins.

By the end of this article, you should be able to say:

“I’m not stuck because I’m lazy or low-energy. I’m stuck because my attention is being spent deciding how to begin instead of executing what’s already defined.”

The kind of energy drain most people don’t notice

When people talk about energy problems, they usually mean exhaustion.

Long days.


Too many responsibilities.


Not enough rest.

Although some early-stage entrepreneurs are collapsing from all the effort they’re expending, others are slowing down from pre-work friction.

This shows up in recognizable behaviours:

• You ask yourself the same question every week
• You reread your planning notes
• You stay busy with secondary tasks while one specific task keeps getting postponed.
• You lose momentum during a work session and stop early because you don’t know what the next step is.

In each case, difficult work isn’t the culprit. Your energy is being consumed because decisions are being kept open.

It’s difficult to see the hidden cost of these small drains, but they add up fast.

Research on decision fatigue supports this pattern.

Studies summarized by Psychology Today show that as people make repeated decisions, the quality of those decisions declines and avoidance increases — not because the work becomes harder, but because mental capacity is being consumed along the way.

What’s often missed, however, is that many of these decisions don’t need to be repeated at all. When choices remain unresolved or undefined, they continue to draw energy long after the moment they first appeared.


The results are sobering: slower progress, weaker follow-through, and growing self-doubt. This compounds massively over time, even though you are still just as capable as before.

Ambiguous work versus difficult work

A common assumption is that hard work is what drains energy.

While that is true, the reality is that unclear work drains more energy than difficult work does.

Here’s why.

When a task is undefined, your brain has to:

• Decide where to begin
• Decide what “done” means
• Decide whether the step you’re taking is the right one

Telling yourself to “Start the website” is an overwhelming command, unless you’re in the business of building websites.

That overwhelm happens every time you revisit the task.

And because the task never fully closes in your mind, the brain keeps it active in the background.

This is why you can feel tired before you’ve actually done anything demanding.

The difficulty isn’t the task itself; the difficulty is in having to redefine the task each time you revisit it.

A concrete example: How one small change stopped the drain

For years, I had a habit of adding projects to my to-do list instead of the actions. Items like:

• “Draft the report”
• “Prepare the material”
• “Work on the document”

Each one looked reasonable.


Each one also required me to decide how to start every single time.

What this looked like in practice:

• I postponed the task and favoured other, easier things.
• I opened the file, skimmed it, and closed it again.
• I spent more time thinking about how to begin than actually beginning.

The shift was simple but precise.

I stopped listing projects.


I listed only the next action.

“Write the subject line.”


“Open the document and outline the first section.”


“Add three bullet points to page one.”

Once the first action was completed, momentum carried me forward. I knew what the second and third actions were and carried them out on the spot. I didn’t need to list out every step on my to-do list, just the next one. The initial friction was gone.

This led me to adding another habit:


Before ending a work session, I began noting down the exact next step so the next session could begin without redefining anything.

The result was less energy spent deciding. That project task in the next session would be ready to go!

That’s when it became clear:


My brain had been using energy to figure out the next step instead of perform it.

How energy leakage actually slows progress

Energy leakage doesn’t result in a grinding halt to your work, but instead produces delay.

It’s a gradual thing and not always obvious.

You still care.


You still show up.


You still “work on things.”

But progress stretches out because energy is being spent on:

• Revisiting the same decisions
• Re-clarifying the same starting point
• Holding multiple undefined commitments open at once

Over time, this creates a second problem.

Confidence drops—not because you’re incapable, but because the visible movement isn’t matching the larger amount of effort you are expending.

The story many people tell themselves is:


“If this were right for me, I’d be moving faster. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

But what’s actually happening is structural, not personal.

This pattern is closely related to decision fatigue — not as exhaustion, but as repeated reprocessing.

When priorities are unclear or assumptions go unexamined, decisions don’t fully close. They linger. The same question gets reopened and reweighed each time work resumes.

I explored this dynamic more deeply in my blog Decision Fatigue: How to Stop Second-Guessing Every Choice in Your Business, where the real drain isn’t the number of decisions entrepreneurs face, but the absence of a clear filter for making them. When decisions lack a framework, even small choices consume disproportionate mental bandwidth.

What closing loops looks like in practice

Closing loops doesn’t mean finishing everything.

It means reducing the number of decisions your brain has to keep reopening.
In practice, that requires four rules:

• Each project must have one visible next action, written as a verb + object
• The next action is written before you stop working, not when you return
• Any decision you revisit more than once must be made explicit and closed, or intentionally parked so it stops consuming attention
• “Start” must be defined as a behaviour, not a category of work

When these loops close, energy returns quickly—often faster than from rest alone—because attention is no longer split.

This is energy containment, and is one of the most overlooked elements during the entrepreneurial journey.

Why this matters for new entrepreneurs in particular

If you’re early in your business journey, ambiguity is everywhere.

You’re making decisions without templates.


You’re learning as you go.


You’re carrying ideas, questions, and possibilities all at once.

Without structure, the leaks of energy accumulate—and progress feels slower than it should.

This is why many capable people conclude they’re “not ready yet,” when what they’re missing is not readiness, but a foundation that reduces friction.

This is also why confidence often increases after structure is installed—not before.

Where to go from here

If you recognized yourself in this article, the next step isn’t to push harder.

It’s to build the foundations that prevent energy from leaking in the first place.

That’s exactly what Module 1: Entrepreneurial Fitness inside Ready Set Grow is designed to do.

It focuses on:

• Containing energy so it’s available for execution
• Building confidence through follow-through, not hype
• Installing practical structures that reduce mental drag
• Creating clarity that shows up in plans and behaviour

If you’d like to explore that foundation at your own pace—with clear lessons, practical tools, and a 14-day risk-free guarantee—you can learn more here:

👉 Explore Module 1: Entrepreneurial Fitness

Let’s learn how to reduce the number of open loops.