In Part 3 of the Unfreeze Yourself Series, I explain why you keep creating plans that look great on Sunday but have fallen apart by Wednesday.
If you’ve ever filled your calendar with ambitious plans only to find yourself falling behind, feeling overwhelmed and wondering why you can’t stick to them then this episode is for you.
Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (PGSD) is opening for enrollment on 17 June 2026 for one week only. This is your final opportunity to secure lifetime access to PGSD when you sign up. To find out more about PGSD and be the first to know when doors open, sign up for the waitlist today at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.
I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.
Sam Laura Brown
Welcome to part three of the Unfreeze Yourself series. So this series is all about how to go from being in a perfectionist freeze where you are stuck, you’re spinning your wheels, you aren’t making progress, you feel overwhelmed by everything there is to do, and you aren’t getting it done. You know what to do, but you’re not doing it.
We’re going from that to being able to actually do the things you need to do to build your business because you’re smart, you’re intelligent, you know what it takes to build a full-time business, you just haven’t been able to get yourself to follow through on it. So in this series, we’ve covered already, in part two, I went into what you need to do, what you need to have to be able to actually build a full-time business, and that’s a full-time business plan. That’s why you don’t know what to focus on because you don’t have a plan that works for your perfectionist brain that allows you to be clear on exactly where you’re going and exactly how to get there.
In this episode, I want to talk about why you don’t stick to your plans because you might hear that like, okay, that sounds good. I’m going to have a full-time business plan, whether I want to be full-time this year or whether I’m a bit earlier on, it’s going to take me a few years to get there. I have a plan.
I love the decisions I’ve made, and that actually feels possible. So now we want to zoom in to your week and actually following through on that plan. So let’s talk about why you don’t stick to your plans.
So what tends to happen for us perfectionists, and if you can relate to this, there’s nothing wrong with you. This is why this series is so important because there is nothing wrong with you. So when it comes to your week, you’ve got time to work on your business.
It might not be as much as you want, but you’ve got time. You know the general direction that you’re going once you have your full-time business plan. And yet you’re still trying to figure out what do I actually do with my time right now? It’s Tuesday, it’s 10 AM.
I’m trying to figure out what to actually work on right now so that 12 months from now, three years from now, I can be full-time in my business. I can be making a full-time income from a business that I actually enjoy working with. How do I actually get that? What does that actually look like? So what’s happening? The problem is why you don’t stick to your plans, like your full-time business plan, why you don’t stick to things like that is because you don’t have a realistic plan that you can actually follow through on for your week.
What you do, what your perfectionist brain does is you create plans for your ideal self. You create plans assuming that there are going to be no interruptions, that you’re going to have a lot of motivation, that you are going to have so much inspiration throughout the week, that there’s going to be no hiccups. And that obviously isn’t the reality.
And so it’s impossible to follow through on your plans. You’ve just got way too much on your list or in your calendar. It is just absolutely jam-packed.
That is a sign that you aren’t planning properly as a perfectionist. So what we perfectionists tend to do when we’re in this situation of not being able to stick to plans is we try harder. We try to be more motivated.
We try to have more discipline. We try to have more willpower. We try waking up at 5 a.m. We try going to the cafe or a co-working space or getting a change of scenery.
Like we just try things to try and be motivated enough to follow through with the plan. But motivation isn’t actually going to be able to get you to follow through with that plan. So what you need instead is a way of planning that doesn’t require you to be motivated.
You want to plan properly as a perfectionist with power planning so that you have a clear, flexible plan for your week that has the tasks that will actually get you to your full-time business in that plan and that it’s workable. You can actually follow through on it. Instead of planning for your ideal self, you plan for your real self, which means you can actually do it, which means you can actually build a full-time business.
So I want to tell you a story about one of my clients. So before she came into Perfectionist Getting Shit Done and started power planning, what she was doing, she was working from a calendar, but it was full of tasks that were either shoulds or to-do’s. So she had in her calendar quite a few to-do’s that were, for example, life admin.
She just added into a time and it wasn’t a time that she was committed to doing it, but she wanted to remember to get it done. So she had it there as a reminder. All of these little life admin to-do’s and business to-do’s.
Remember to back up computer. Things like that that she wanted to make sure happened and to remember. She also had in there lots of shoulds.
She had CEO time, journaling, these things that she didn’t really know what to do with that time, but she had heard that she should do things like that. So her calendar ended up being full of things that she wasn’t committed to doing and that weren’t actually going to get her to her goals, which is why it was so easy for her to procrastinate and get stuck in overthinking and basically just feel like she was working really hard to build her business, but it wasn’t getting anywhere. And then she felt so frustrated and ashamed because she was thinking, I’m working so hard.
Why isn’t this working? Is there something wrong with me? But all she needed to do was start power play and planning in a way that worked for her perfectionist brain. Again, that means clear. It means realistic.
It means it has tasks in there that will actually get you to having a full-time business. It’s something that’s flexible. So when there’s hiccups, when life happens, because life will be life-ing, then you can actually still follow through with those plans.
So power planning is how you take your full-time business plan, which is going to give your perfectionist brain clarity and direction. You know where you’re going. Power planning allows you each week to take the steps that allow you to create the full-time business, that allow you to follow through on the business plan.
And what I’m going to be talking about with you in the next part, part four, is why you keep burning out. Because you hear this and go, okay, full-time business plan that works for my brain. Great.
Power planning, a planning method, a weekly planning method that works for my brain and I can actually follow through. Great. But okay, what if I burn out? What if I can’t follow through on that without completely exhausting myself, especially since I’ve got a full life? What do I do then? That’s what I’m going to be talking to you about in part four. So stay tuned.
Outro
If this episode resonated with you, you want to be inside Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, aka PGSD. PGSD is the business program for perfectionists, and inside you’ll learn business strategy, weekly planning, and how to follow through with your plans in a way that works for your perfectionist brain, which means you’ll be able to build a fulfilling full-time business without burning yourself out. The doors are opening on the 17th of June for one week only, and this is your final opportunity to join PGSD with lifetime access.
To join the waitlist and find out more, go to samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.