The weight of unfinished tasks (Or: why your brain is probably more tired than your body)
Have you ever considered the weight of unfinished tasks?
It’s not the long hours. It’s not the awkward client conversations. It’s not even the tax return.
It’s the mental load. The invisible, relentless, absolutely exhausting weight of being responsible for ALL. THE. THINGS.
And I don’t mean physically tired – although honestly, that too. I mean that very specific kind of brain-tired that hits you at 4pm on a completely normal Tuesday when technically nothing catastrophic has happened, and yet somehow your head feels like it’s run a marathon in flip flops.
Sound familiar?
You’ve answered emails. Jumped on calls. Sorted a team thing. Replied to that WhatsApp. Chased an invoice. Remembered halfway through the school run that you forgot to order something really quite important. Added three new things to your to-do list while actively ignoring the seven that were already on it.
A completely normal Tuesday. Absolutely fine. Why are you so tired?
Here's what I reckon is actually going on
Two things. Decision fatigue and the weight of unfinished tasks.
As business owners, we make decisions all day long. Big ones, small ones, and some that should be unnecessary but, in fact, keep being necessary.Â
Should I hire now or wait? Should I send that proposal? Should I finally switch systems? Should I follow up on that lead? Should I delegate this or just do it myself because it’ll definitely be quicker? Should I launch now or push it back? Should we have jacket potatoes or pasta for tea? I genuinely cannot make one more decision today.
Every single decision takes a tiny nibble of your mental energy. Individually, these decisions are no big deal. But collectively, they are absolutely wiping you out.
And then, we add in the unfinished tasks.
The email you flagged and never went back to. The half-written proposal lurking in your drafts. The awkward conversation you really need to have but keep spectacularly avoiding. The spreadsheet. The process you keep meaning to document. The invoice to chase. The brilliant idea you had three weeks ago that’s just sitting there.
None of these things are actively shouting at you right now. But they’re there. Quietly humming away in the background like twenty browser tabs you forgot to close.
And those tabs; are they open because something shinier came along?
You know exactly what I mean. You start something with genuine energy and enthusiasm, you’re in it, and then a new idea lands, or an urgent thing pops up, or something more exciting catches your eye. And suddenly that original task is sitting at 60%, not finished, not abandoned, just hovering.
Then another one joins it. And another. Until you’ve got a whole collection of almost-finished things quietly humming away in the background, each one costing you more mental energy than you realise.
That last 40%, it’s harder. It requires more focus, more discipline, more pushing through. But it’s also where the satisfaction lives. Where you finally get to see the impact of what you’ve actually built. Ten tasks sitting at 60% will never give you what one task at 100% will.
So sometimes the most productive thing you can do isn’t start something new. It’s go back and finish something you already started. (There’s a Gladys Knight song there, isn’t there?)
Here's the bit that actually changed how I think about this
I don’t think it’s always the 
doing that exhausts us.
I think it’s the holding.
Holding the awareness that these things still need doing. Holding the responsibility of remembering them. Holding all those little open loops that haven’t been closed yet.
I see this all the time in conversations. Someone jumps on a call feeling frustrated, convinced they’ve achieved absolutely nothing that week. As we talk things through, it turns out they’ve been delivering client work, supporting their team, handling the unexpected, solving problems, and essentially keeping an entire business afloat… whilst simultaneously carrying a mental to-do list the length of the M25.
And suddenly the frustration makes complete sense – but the story shifts too. Because they’re not behind. They’re not failing. They’re not bad at this.
They’re just carrying a lot. Like, a shit tonne.
Here's what I’m pretty sure about
Because one of the biggest myths in business is that overwhelm happens to people who are bad at managing their time. In my experience, that’s rarely true. More often, they’re simply carrying too much invisible weight, and invisible weight is exhausting.
Because one of the biggest myths in business is that overwhelm happens to people who are bad at managing their time. In my experience, that’s rarely true. More often, they’re simply carrying too much invisible weight, and invisible weight is exhausting.
Here's something to sit with
What unfinished things are you carrying around right now? What decisions are quietly draining your energy every day simply because they haven’t been made yet?
And do all of those things actually need to stay with you?
Or have you just been carrying them for so long that you’ve stopped noticing how heavy the backpack’s got?
Because sometimes the answer isn’t better time management. It isn’t a new system. And it’s definitely not trying to get better at carrying more.
Sometimes what you actually need is space. Space to think clearly. Space to untangle what feels messy. Space to say things out loud and realise that some of this weight was never meant to be yours to carry alone in the first place.
Also – space to actually do the thing. Accountability to say – ok, this morning, let’s tick off those 4 x remaining 40%’s and see where that gets us.
The people I work with rarely need someone to swoop in with all the answers. They need someone to help them slow down, challenge what they’re holding on to, and gain enough perspective for the next step to feel obvious again.
Because sometimes the most valuable thing isn’t someone doing the work for you.
It’s simply having someone help you put the backpack down for a while.Â
I don’t just help you do business better. I help you think better inside your business.
Creating calm, space, and productivity. You’ve got this 💪
One Response
great idea