Stop Doing Comfortable Work
If no one notices your work is gone, it probably never mattered.
Most people aren’t tired from working too hard.
They’re tired from working on things that don’t matter.
That’s the uncomfortable truth about entrepreneurship.
The job isn’t just to work hard. It’s to do the kind of work that feels uncertain, exposed, and sometimes inconvenient… but actually moves something forward. Real work isn’t clean. It’s not always impressive. And most of the time, it doesn’t look like “productivity” from the outside.
It’s sending the message you’ve been putting off.
Following up again when you don’t want to.
Having the conversation that could go sideways.
It’s not building polished slide decks that no one opens.
It’s not tweaking spreadsheets that don’t change decisions.
And it’s definitely not doing work just so it looks like you’re doing work.
There’s nothing more draining than putting hours into something that goes nowhere. You prep for a meeting, and your work doesn’t even come up. You send a summary, and no one reads it. You build a report, and nothing changes.
That’s your signal.
If no one is reacting to your work, stop and question it.
What happens if you don’t do it?
Does anything break?
Does anyone notice?
If the answer is no, you’re not doing meaningful work. You’re doing comfortable work.
I’ve been there. I used to build out board decks for staffing updates. If I was lucky, I’d get through a few slides. Truth is, no one really cared about the deck. They just wanted to know I was on top of things.
What the process did give me was clarity. It forced me to know my numbers, know my gaps, and know my story. But the format? Probably not the best way to get there.
There’s almost always a better way…you just have to be willing to find it.
And here’s the part most people overlook:
We sit all day. We think all day. We stare at screens all day. Then we wonder why we feel off, stuck, or burned out.
You don’t fix that with another “mental health day.”
You fix it by moving.
Go mountain biking.
Go for a run.
Do push-ups.
Do hard, outdoor, hands-on work, yard work and get your hands dirty, farm-type work, anything that gets you out of your head and into your body.
There’s something about real physical effort that resets you. It clears your mind, sharpens your thinking, and makes the work that actually matters feel a lot more obvious.
So if you take anything from this, let it be simple:
Do something uncomfortable every day.
But make sure it actually matters.
That’s the work.