There was a point in my solo business where I was running 10 clients on hourly retainers. That was just my clients, never mind my teams clients that I was acting as piggy in the middle for.

Managing the variable tasks flying in was taking up huge portions of my day and I was struggling with regular cycles of burnout.

Experiencing the same Sunday scaries I thought I’d left behind in the 9-5…

I was exhausted with the context-switching and holding a bajillion moving parts in my head (even with the tools to stop that)

I was jam packed all day… but my business was stagnant.

So I introduced rule after rule. Perpetually tweaking my setup with new workflows. Ticket submission. Restricting communication channels, day-of-week allocations per client.

Nothing really changed because the problem wasn't that I needed better organisation, I needed systems.

So what actually shifted things? Let’s get into it.

Why the tool always gets the blame

When something isn't working in our business, the tool is an easy target.

It's visible and tangible and swapping it out feels like doing something concrete.

So we migrate from ClickUp to Asana. From Asana to Notion. From Notion to the notes app. From the notes app back to ClickUp again.

Surely… THIS tool will be my saviour.

What was actually going on…

I had to face up to reality at some point.

The reason I needed an elaborate project management system was because my business was structured in a way that generated an unmanageable amount of complexity I had to get out my head somehow.

I like to call it clutter - operational clutter (the day to day stuff)

10 clients to manage per day, open ended reactive hourly retainers.
I was saying yes to anything I was technically capable of doing.

The volume was the problem. Not the filing system.

And no tool (however well-built and set up) can contain what is structurally too much input to begin with.

It’s just making neater piles of sh*t, but everything still stank.

I learnt this the hard way. By 2022, I was going into full shutdown. My brain doing the only thing it could when asked to hold more than it was ever designed to.

I often stopped responding to emails. Replying to whatsapps all while the obligations were piling up and this shameful feeling that I was letting everyone down.

I mean, we call it procrastination but it’s really just information something needs to change.

In my case, it had to. Or I wouldn’t have had a business.

So the hourly billing had to go and more streamlined offerings were brought in.

Marie Kondo was on to something.

Surprise… I am actually a trained professional organiser, which my naturally organised family think is hilarious considering my bed was stuffed with un-lidded felt tip pens + toys that I would sleep on top of.

I started to apply my professional organiser training to business systems.

And a key concept is… containment.

Most people think a container is a place to simply hold our stuff.

But it is not. A container is a natural limit for how much you can hold at any one time.

The sock drawer isn't there to store your socks. It's there to tell you when you have too many. When the drawer won't close, that's information. It’s not a cue to buy another set of drawers.

We don't need a bigger drawer. We need fewer socks.

And it's the same in business.

If your day to day feels chaotic, I don’t believe it’s necessarily because you need a better project management tool (you’ve tried 5 now?).

You may need less volume to begin with.

Google Calendar as a task list?!

When I restructured my business to intensive, well structured project-based work, a lot changed.

I now work with one client at a time and have zero open-ended retainers.

Something kinda funny happened after this change.

I stopped needing to use project management tools like ClickUp.

Because the structural complexity that made it necessary was gone.
The reactive work was no more.

The needing to flit about between all these demands were no longer a thing.

Because of this more structured, contained way of working with clients.

Examples:

Revisions are done live on calls
‘Can you just’ asks from existing clients - sure, here’s a paid scheduler to book a slot in my diary (no quoting + invoicing small asks)

My CRM (Moxie) still handles client-facing tasks and reminders on auto. But for my own day to day work?

It all goes in my Google Calendar.

I know. It sounds too simple.

But there's a reason and it comes back to containers.

Time blocking in a calendar is a physical constraint. I have a slot. The work lives in the slot. If it doesn't fit, I move it — which means I have to make a decision about priority, not just add it to an ever growing list.

A to do list has no natural limit. It just grows. And a sprawling, scrolling list of tasks is one of the fastest ways to recreate the exact overwhelm you were trying to escape.

____

The calendar forces containment. It makes the capacity visible on a week view. Life + work in one spot.

And it means those with access to my calendar are not booking over my client project slot or marketing time.

If you have tried time blocking before and hated it, it probably wasn’t the tool - but your mindset approaching it.

A mindset of using it to force yourself into work you hate or creating a robotic plan designed totally against your natural ways of working (and erm, any humans)

Time blocking is not rigid, your approach to it may have been.

Where to start if this is resonating

If you're reading this and thinking yes, but I can't just ditch my PM tool. You are probably right.

Actually a PM tool is necessary for many businesses.

But are you a soloist who only needs it because the volume in is too high?

Is it because you are juggling 10 clients at once with communication flying in from everywhere?

Is it because you have very little containment around delivering your offers? No process with clear boundaries communicated at the start + throughout?

Because you can design a lot of this out.

I call it structural clutter - messy, un-contained, sprawling offers and services.

And if we have structural clutter….it creates operational clutter (AKA, your day to day being a hot mess).

Before you start revamping your service delivery….

Start with clarity: Why does my business exist? What is it’s purpose.
Work from the foundations. It shapes everything else.

Did this land?

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