Sloth or Cocaine?
So, I’m now nearly halfway through my second year of running my own business, The Cluster and I’m starting to realise something about myself that I probably should have worked out a while ago. I might have undiagnosed ADHD or I might be neurodivergent in some other way, or, frankly, my brain might just have decided that running a business was the perfect opportunity to completely f*ck with me.
Before I go any further, I should probably explain what I mean, because I’m aware that opening a blog with “I might have ADHD” followed shortly afterwards by “my business operates like cocaine” could take this conversation somewhere slightly unexpected.
But stick with me.
I’ve realised that the way I run my business seems to operate in one of two very distinct modes:
Sloth or cocaine
Let me expand before I get cancelled, somebody calls an intervention, or I’m carted off somewhere for a nice lie-down. There doesn’t seem to be much of an in-between setting. I can go from being completely and utterly overwhelmed by everything I have to do to suddenly becoming an unstoppable productivity machine. There doesn’t appear to be a gentle cruise-control setting. It’s either “I am going to achieve absolutely everything today” or “I have decided that lying horizontally and staring into the middle distance is now my primary business strategy.”
And when you run a business on your own, there is an absolutely ridiculous amount to be overwhelmed by.
There are emails, invoices, marketing, social media, events, customers, suppliers, bills, bookkeeping, websites, sales, networking, planning, cleaning, maintenance, ordering things, chasing people, answering questions, making decisions and remembering the thing that somebody told you about three weeks ago that you absolutely promised you would deal with.
And then there’s the sheer number of different roles you have to occupy.
When you’re a solo entrepreneur, you’re not just the founder. You’re the director, salesperson, marketing department, finance department, customer service department, IT department, receptionist, cleaner, caretaker, HR department, events manager, social media manager and, in my case, the person who apparently knows where every extension lead, cable, spare chair and random bit of stationery is located.
You can be having a serious conversation about the future of your business one minute and, five minutes later, be on your hands and knees crying and trying to work out why the twatting printer isn’t working and all of those things require different parts of your brain. Different conversations. Different energy. Different priorities. Different gear changes.
That, I think, is one of the things I’ve found hardest.
It isn’t necessarily the amount of work. It’s the constant switching between types of work.
One minute I’m thinking strategically about where I want the business to be in twelve months. The next I’m answering a customer WhatsApp. Then I’m writing an Instagram post. Then I’m looking at an invoice. Then somebody needs something in the building. Then I remember I haven’t replied to an email. Then I have an idea for a new project. Then I realise I need to pay a supplier. And suddenly my brain looks like somebody has thrown 150 browser tabs at it and hoped for the best.
When it gets to that point, something quite strange happens.
I do absolutely nothing.
Not because I don’t care. Not because I’m lazy. Quite the opposite. There is so much going on in my head that I can’t work out where to start, so I don’t start at all.
I enter what I have started calling my sloth stage.
I’ll sit there knowing I have a million things to do, feeling increasingly guilty about the fact that I’m not doing them, while simultaneously being completely incapable of deciding which one of those million things I should actually do first and then, usually when I least expect it, something clicks.
Suddenly my brain goes:
RIGHT. WE’RE DOING EVERYTHING.
And that’s when cocaine mode arrives, not literally, obviously (calm down!) But metaphorically, my brain suddenly seems to have discovered an unlimited supply of energy and enthusiasm. Suddenly I’m answering emails, writing social media posts, planning events, sending invoices, sorting out problems, making phone calls, coming up with new ideas, redesigning something that didn’t actually need redesigning and potentially reorganising a cupboard that was perfectly bloody fine exactly as it was.
I become hyper-focused.
I can get an extraordinary amount done in a very short period of time. I can sit down to do one thing and, three hours later, look up and realise I have somehow completed twelve other things along the way, and actually, for a solo entrepreneur, that can be bloody brilliant, because when you’re building a business on your own, you need that energy. You need to be able to show up. You need to sell. You need to network. You need to make decisions. You need to create. You need to communicate. You need to solve problems.
And if your business is also an extension of you, that becomes even more important.
The Cluster is a good example of that for me. People aren’t just buying a desk or hiring a space. They’re buying into an idea. They’re buying into the atmosphere, the community, the personality and the slightly bonkers vision behind it.
And, whether I like it or not, a lot of that is me.
I am part of the brand. I’m the person people meet. I’m the person who talks about the business. I’m the person who tells people why I believe in it. I’m the person making the connections and creating the relationships and when I’m on form, that can be incredibly powerful. I can throw myself into it completely. I can talk about the business for hours. I can get excited about an idea and make other people excited about it. I can see possibilities everywhere.
That energy is one of the reasons I think I’ve managed to get the business as far as I have.
But there is a rather significant catch.
You can’t permanently live in cocaine mode.
Eventually, your brain sends the invoice and when that happens, you crash back down the other end of the spectrum, the problem is that when you work for yourself, there isn’t necessarily anybody there to catch you. There’s no business partner sitting opposite you saying, “Right, you deal with that and I’ll deal with this.” There isn’t somebody automatically noticing that you’ve had enough and saying, “Go home. I’ve got this.” There isn’t another person quietly picking up three of the things you’ve dropped because your brain has decided it has had enough.
There’s just you.
And that can be one of the loneliest things about being a solo entrepreneur.
I absolutely love running my own business. I genuinely do. I love the freedom. I love making decisions. I love building something that didn’t exist before. I love meeting people and seeing an idea become something real.
But loving something doesn’t mean it isn’t hard.
And it doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally sit somewhere on your own and think:
What the actual f*ck am I doing?
There are days when running your own business feels incredibly empowering and there are other days when it feels like you’ve accidentally volunteered to become responsible for absolutely everything that could possibly go wrong. That’s why I’m starting to realise that sometimes the most productive thing I can do is deliberately step away from it.
Go somewhere quiet. Sit down. Put the phone away. Stop answering everyone. Stop reacting.
And actually think.
What am I trying to achieve? What is working? What isn’t? What am I spending far too much energy on? What could I stop doing? What do I actually enjoy? What drains me?
And, perhaps most importantly:
How does my brain actually work?
Because I think that’s the bit I’m beginning to understand. Maybe the answer isn’t to try to turn myself into somebody who works in exactly the same way as everybody else. Maybe the answer is to understand how I work and build the business around that.
If I know that having 25 competing priorities makes my brain shut down, perhaps I need fewer priorities. If I know that I work brilliantly when I can properly focus, perhaps I need to protect that time. If I know that constantly switching between tasks sends my brain into a spin, perhaps I need to create bigger blocks of time to concentrate on one thing.
And if I know that there are going to be periods where my brain simply says, “NOPE, we’re not doing anything today,” perhaps I need to stop treating that as a moral failure. Maybe I need to build some flexibility into the way I work.
Because perhaps being neurodivergent, whether I actually am or whether I’m simply discovering that my brain has its own slightly f*cked-up operating system, isn’t necessarily something I need to overcome, maybe it’s something I need to understand.
And there are some genuine advantages to the way my brain seems to work.
The hyper-focus. The ridiculous number of ideas. The enthusiasm. The energy. The ability to see possibilities where other people might not. The willingness to throw yourself completely into something you believe in.
Those things can be brilliant when you’re building a business. They can be the difference between an idea remaining an idea and actually becoming something real.
But they can also be exhausting.
Because if you are constantly moving between FULL SEND and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, eventually you have to find some sort of middle ground and I think that’s what I’m learning now.
Running a solo business isn’t just about learning how to run a business.
It’s also about learning how to run yourself.
We talk endlessly about productivity, morning routines, time management, hustle culture and working harder. But perhaps sometimes the answer isn’t to squeeze more productivity out of yourself, perhaps the answer is to understand why you aren’t being productive in the first place.
Are you tired?
Overwhelmed?
Bored?
Distracted?
Doing too many things at once?
Have you simply been “on” for too long?
Because I’ve realised that if I don’t understand what’s going on inside my own head, I can end up being a terrible boss to myself and that’s quite an important realisation when you are the only employee. I wouldn’t expect an employee to work at maximum intensity every single day, without a break, while constantly switching between ten different jobs, dealing with interruptions and carrying the entire responsibility for the business on their shoulders.
So why the f*ck do I expect myself to?
Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate the sloth periods or the hyper-focus.
Maybe the goal is to understand them.
To recognise when I’m heading towards overwhelm. To know when I need to step away. To protect the periods when I am focused and productive. To create systems that make things easier when my brain isn’t cooperating.
And, importantly, to stop feeling guilty about being a human being. Because I think that’s one of the traps of being a solo entrepreneur. You start believing that because it’s your business, you should always be doing something. If you’re watching Netflix, you should be working. If you’re having a day off, you should be answering emails. If you’re sitting in a coffee shop, you should probably be networking.
And that way of thinking is bollocks.
Sometimes doing nothing is exactly what your brain needs.
Sometimes going somewhere completely alone and sitting quietly for an hour is more useful than spending another three hours staring at your laptop pretending you’re working. Sometimes you need to get away from the business to remember why you started it in the first place and sometimes you need to accept that the business isn’t going to collapse because you took an afternoon off.
So, I don’t know yet whether I actually have ADHD. I haven’t been diagnosed, and I’m not trying to diagnose myself through a blog post but what I do know is that I’ve started recognising patterns in the way I work, and those patterns are telling me something. They’re telling me that my brain doesn’t necessarily work in a nice, linear, predictable way and perhaps instead of constantly fighting that, I need to learn how to work with it.
Because there are some pretty bloody amazing things about having a brain that can go from zero to a hundred when it finds something it cares about.
I just need to remember that zero is also a legitimate speed.
The Bit Where I Try to Be Wise
So, if there is a takeaway from all of this for anyone else running their own business, it’s probably this:
Get to know yourself before you try to optimise your business.
We spend so much time worrying about productivity, revenue, customers, systems and growth that we forget about the person sitting in the middle of all of it. If your brain works differently, don’t automatically assume it needs fixing. Maybe it needs understanding. Notice what overwhelms you. Notice what energises you. Notice what you can hyper-focus on for three hours without noticing the time. Notice what makes your brain scream NOPE.
Then build your business around what you learn.
Protect your focus.
Create space.
Ask for help.
Take breaks.
Stop trying to do everything.
And don’t confuse resting with failing.
Your business is only as sustainable as you are. So perhaps the aim isn’t to become a productivity machine, perhaps it’s to build a business that you can actually enjoy running. Because being your own boss is hard enough without becoming your own worst boss as well.
And if anyone needs me now, I’ll be over here in my sloth era.
Probably thinking about work.
Definitely making a mental list of everything I need to do.
Just not actually doing any of it!
