When I start working with a new client, one of the first questions I ask is, “What is it that keeps you from being successful? What is it you must overcome for your business to grow?” Recently, someone answered that question with, “The voices inside my head.”

I knew instantly what he was talking about. I hear the voices, too – we all do. They say things like:

“I don’t have enough experience.”

“I’m not charismatic enough.”

“I’m not a good leader.” 

“My peers are all doing better than me. I must be broken.”

“There are no unrealistic goals, only unrealistic timeframes.” – Dan Sullivan

The past three months have been full of annual planning sessions in which we review what we accomplished in 2016 and identify what we aim to achieve in 2017, especially in the first quarter.

Many companies had a great year in 2016. Some of the wins were tangible, dollar-driven results, while others were more qualitative. Wrapping up the year is absolutely a time for celebration, and it’s also a great time to reflect on what’s been learned and what lies ahead for 2017.

But not all goals were achieved.

Are you drowning in a sea of undone to-dos and action items you haven't acted on? Do you have a list of 50 unprioritized goals to accomplish by some unspecified date and another 100 things that you just might get around to one of these days? Are you surrounded by sticky notes and find yourself bouncing from one half-done task to another?

Well, then, I can confidently predict the future. Most of those goals, action items, and ideas aren't going to get dealt with. They won’t get scratched off your list, and they will add to a continuing mountain of stressors that eventually keep you up at night and ruin most of your days before they’ve even started.

Business leaders have a lot to do. The number of tasks that need to get done keeps expanding, and as a result the To Do list grows and grows. Some people manage tasks through sticky notes, some use technology tools such as Asana or Trello, while others use hand-written lists of stuff they need to get done.

There are a lot of ways to manage tasks, but the majority of us are still overwhelmed by our To Do list.  Here’s what I experienced when I took the helm of running our 3rd generation family business.

This blog post was prompted by a December 2015 blog post from Seth Godin that I tucked away for inspiration, called, "Is it too little butter, or too much bread?" Here is the gist. When is the last time you complained about having too many resources in your business? Too many engineers, too many clients, too much revenue?

Let me guess. The answer is probably never. It is always the opposite. The engineering plan for this year to too expansive – we don’t have enough...fill in the blank – time, money, people. And so on.