The Doorframe That Exposed My Excuses

For months, my front doorframe annoyed me. The hallway has no natural light. No windows. Zero UV. Which means the white gloss I once thought was a brilliant idea slowly turned nicotine yellow. Not “a bit off-white.” Full seventy-cigarettes-a-day energy. Right there by the front door - the first impression anyone gets. Over Christmas, I decided to fix it. I painted the door itself. Ran out of time. Left the frame. And then something very familiar happened. I told myself I’d do it at the weekend. The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Time January rolled on. Every weekend magically filled up. Work. Commitments. Other people’s priorities. The doorframe sat there quietly, mocking me, waiting to be rolled over to next Christmas. In my head, evenings were off-limits. After work is for feeding the cat, making dinner, slowing down, “recovering.” I had convinced myself there simply wasn’t time to do anything meaningful once the workday ended. Comfortable nonsense. But nonsense all the same. Because the truth is this - most of us are not short of time. We are short of decisive moments. And when we delay something small, it doesn’t disappear. It lingers. It leaks energy. It occupies mental bandwidth far longer than the task itself would have taken. Priority, Not Capacity This weekend, I called myself out. I got home from work. I didn’t sit down. I didn’t negotiate. I changed straight into decorating clothes and painted the doorframe. Job done. No drama. No exhaustion. No collapse into a heap afterwards. Time wasn’t the issue. Priority was. I wasn’t too tired. I had simply decided that rest mattered more than resolution. I wasn’t protecting my energy - I was draining it by carrying an unfinished job around in my head for weeks. This is the part that matters for you as a business owner. In a coaching franchise, the biggest bottleneck is rarely skill. It is rarely opportunity. It is almost never intelligence. It is delayed decisions. Postponed actions. The quiet story that progress must happen in big, uninterrupted, perfectly scheduled chunks. It doesn’t. Avoidance Dressed Up as Self-Care “I’ll do it when things are quieter.” “I’ll sort that once the weekend comes.” “I just need to slow down after work.” Sometimes that’s valid. Burnout is real. Capacity matters. But often - if we’re honest - it is avoidance dressed up as self-care. The British Psychological Society has repeatedly highlighted how procrastination increases stress rather than reducing it. The thing we avoid continues to activate low-level cognitive load. It sits there. Unfinished. Whispering. As franchise owners in a coaching franchise, this distinction is critical. Because businesses do not stall from lack of ability. They stall from the accumulation of small delays. The follow-up email not sent. The call not made. The social post drafted but never published. The uncomfortable conversation postponed. Each one seems minor. Collectively, they slow momentum. Momentum rarely arrives in a free weekend. It usually begins in an ordinary Tuesday evening. Your Doorframe The doorframe did not need a free weekend. It needed a decision. And that is how growth often works inside a coaching franchise. Not through grand reinventions, but through small, decisive actions taken when it would be easier to defer them. So here is the uncomfortable question. What is your doorframe? The small, irritating, energy-draining task you keep pushing to “later” because it does not feel urgent enough - even though it is quietly taxing you every day. Is it refining your offer? Following up a lead? Reviewing your numbers? Booking that networking meeting you keep thinking about? If you are waiting for the perfect time, you will be waiting a long time. One of the advantages of operating within a coaching franchise is structure. Accountability. Proven systems. But even the best framework cannot override hesitation. Action is still a choice. Sometimes progress is not about working harder. It is about deciding that tonight counts. The doorframe took less than an hour. The mental weight I carried for three months? Much heavier. Your next piece of momentum may not require a new strategy. It may simply require you to stand up, change your clothes, and start before your brain has time to negotiate. Because “I’ll do it at the weekend” is rarely about the calendar. It is about courage. by Gemma Bailey (with the help of Ai) https://www.peoplebuilding.co.uk/franchise