Welcome back to Plan Like a Boss. I'm your host, Tanya Lawson. And before we start today, I want you to know this episode touches on illness and recovery. Nothing graphic, nothing heavy-handed, but if you're in a tender place, listen when it feels supportive to you. Don't listen because you think you should right now. If your life has slowed you down in a way that you didn't choose, then this episode is for you. Maybe you're navigating health issues, burnout, you're going through a period of grief, you're a caregiver, you're mentally exhausted, or maybe you're just in a season where your capacity is just different. Well, I want you to know something. You're not behind. You're not broken. You're adapting because you have to. And today, I want to talk to you about momentum. Not the kind that demands more from you, but the kind of momentum that meets you where you are. Now, traditional momentum advice, it just doesn't work in these situations because most advice about momentum assumes that your energy is predictable. It assumes that your body is cooperative. It assumes that your focus is going to be reliable. But if that were true for you right now, you probably wouldn't need this episode. When life hits hard, the usual advice is just be consistent, just show up every day. But when you're really going through something, that can feel so invalidating. Because some days showing up simply looks like survival. Showing up means that you got out of bed and you got in the shower. So let's name this very clearly. If your momentum keeps collapsing, it's not because you're failing. It's because the version of momentum you were taught just doesn't fit your life anymore. Now, momentum isn't speed, it's continuity. You don't lose momentum just because you slow down. You stop losing momentum when you start believing that your efforts don't count at all. So, momentum, it's not big progress. It's not those big visible wins. It's not constant output. Instead, momentum is staying connected to yourself. It's taking one step instead of disappearing completely. Refusing the I'll restart later trap. Momentum is quiet and it's deeply personal. So for you, that momentum might be today, I am going to reply to one Instagram DM. It might be today, I am going to read one chapter of this business book. It might be today, I'm going to go see my therapist or take my medicine. All of those are small steps that are going to lead you to bigger momentum. So here is the question that matters the most in those hard seasons. What is the smallest action that you can take right now that will let you stay in motion without hurting yourself? We're not talking about what you should do. We're not going to should ourselves here. We're not talking about what past you could do, not what the Instagram productivity gurus say you can do, what you can do on a low capacity day. That action is your momentum floor. So some examples might be I wrote one sentence of an email, or I sent one message on Instagram. I had one boundary that I kept in place, or I made the choice to rest without guilt. One task that protects your future self is going to help you build that momentum. If you hit the floor, the day still counts as long as you got that one task done, even if that's all you did. Now, recovery weeks, they still count as momentum and they always have. Because some weeks just aren't for growth. Some weeks you need a week where you can just maintain. You can spend some time healing. You can reacalibrate your business. You can look at what really is going to move the needle. Sometimes we need those self-discovery weeks where we just sit down and we look at our business. We know it's not working and we just dig in and say, what is one thing that is going to work? There's a great book called The One Thing. I think it's by Darren Hardy. I'm not sure. I will link that down in the show notes. It's a great book. And it's all about focusing on one thing that's going to produce momentum. If you're in one of those weeks right now, I want you to hear this. Recovery is not the opposite of momentum, it's what makes momentum possible again. So when you honor recovery instead of fighting it, you preserve trust in yourself. And self-trust is the foundation for true momentum. Now, I want to share this part briefly because it matters for you, not for me. There was a season in my life where my body decided the pace, not me. That was this summer when I was going through chemotherapy. And what I learned very quickly was that pushing harder did not build momentum. Because in the very beginning, I tried to get out and walk every single day during my chemo treatments. And all it did was make me feel worse. Pretending that I had more capacity than I actually did was not helpful for me. The only thing that really helped was honoring my reality. On some days, when my video editor text and said, your next video is ready for you to check out, I would just text back and say, I'm having a bad day. I trust you. Having a team you trust is important. And I did not have the capacity to even watch a video that day. That's where this whole framework came from. It did not come from theory, it did not come from productivity culture. It came from my very own lived experience. And if this approach feels a little gentler than what you've tried before, well, that's intentional. Planning's only job is to protect you. Planning, when you're going through a hard season, has only one purpose, and that is to reduce decision fatigue and protect your energy. It's not to maximize your output. It's not to keep you on track. Planning should answer just a few questions. What matters right now? What can wait for later? And what helps me feel safe continuing? So, to go back to my example, what mattered at the moment for me was staying in bed and sleeping and resting because my body was being poisoned and I just had to survive it. What could wait till later? Well, you know what? I didn't even have to watch that video at all. I knew that my editor was a good editor and I could trust her to just put up what she did. I didn't need to micromanage her. And it helped me feel safe continuing because I knew that. Now, if your plan makes you feel like a failure by Wednesday, it's not supportive enough. A good plan is going to make it easier for you to keep going. Now, if you're in the middle of it right now, if today feels heavy, I want you to hear this very clearly. You don't need to catch up. You don't need to start over, and you don't need a new system because you're not behind. You are a work in progress. Momentum for you right now might look like staying where you are or choosing softness. Doing less, but on purpose to give yourself time to recover and trusting that this still counts because it does. Maybe instead of doing your three big goals for the quarter like I do, you you only do two like I'm doing this quarter, or maybe you only do one, and that's okay. This season of the podcast is all about building a business that's going to work with your real life, not against it. And if you want support in creating systems that honor your capacity and protect momentum during those hard seasons, that's what I focus on with my clients. But for today, here is your only takeaway. You don't need to move fast. You just need to stay where you are right now. Now, next week, we're going to be talking about how that you can stay seen without showing up every single day, which is perfect if you're going through a hard season at the moment. So I will talk to you then. And until next week, keep planning like a boss.