Most self-employed professionals and creatives truly enjoy no longer having to answer to The Boss. But the lack of someone to report to can also be a problem. There’s no one to make you do stuff you just don’t want to do. If you procrastinate about posting to your blog or Substack, resist going to business events, or find follow-up calls too scary to make, no one will know that you’re avoiding these tasks except you.

I understand that running a successful business involves activities that can be confronting. Even I don’t find all the projects on my list easy to do, and that’s after 35-plus years of being self-employed. Finding ways to overcome their resistance to what they know they should do is often the first topic clients and students bring up when they start working with me.

I’ve found that the winning formula to get yourself to take action about business projects isn’t only about carrots and sticks. Most of us need a combination of three different approaches:

• Pursue the carrots.
• Avoid the sticks.
• Look both inward and outward.

Seek out carrots that make you want to move forward.

1. Set up a reward you can claim when you complete challenging tasks. Grant yourself a square of chocolate for each follow-up call you make, or indulge in a night at the theater when you accomplish a major project like revising all your web copy.
2. Visualize the positive end result you want your activities to create. See yourself with dozens of happy clients, or imagine the fulfillment you’ll feel from engaging full-time in the work you enjoy.
3. When a particular task has you feeling blocked, find an easier element of it to begin with. For example, if you can’t seem to get started on writing a client report, begin by just listing the ideas you want to include in it, or start by writing the ending.

Establish sticks for not moving forward which you’ll want to avoid.

4. Create some benevolent peer pressure from friends or colleagues who also have business tasks to complete. Get together in a co-working group — in person or online — where you keep each other company while you work on your own tasks. Or exchange commitments with a person or group about what you’ll do by when, then set a time to check in with each other about what you did.
5. Establish a penalty for not completing your intended tasks. For example, pledge to a colleague that you’ll donate $100 to her favorite charity if you don’t get your web copy written by a certain date. Or deny yourself permission to eat your favorite food on every day you don’t make your scheduled follow-up calls.
6. Imagine the awful outcome that will result if you don’t keep moving forward on your business. Make it dramatically terrible — see yourself broke and sleeping on your sister’s couch, or having to go back to the job you hated most and work there forever.

Adopt an attitude of inward and outward curiosity.

7. Look inside yourself to find your deepest motivation for being successfully self-employed. What did you dream of when you decided to work for yourself? What are your hopes for the business you’re building? Keep those aspirations in front of you when it’s time to tackle projects you find difficult.
8. Work through blocks to action by posing yourself powerful questions with the help of a business coach or trusted friend. For example, have a colleague ask you to imagine yourself in five years, and from that wiser place, describe what you see about how you are acting now.
9. Collect words, pictures, and music that inspire you to feel smarter and stronger. When you notice you are resisting a task, reach into your collection for a motivating quote, mantra, image, or song to shift your frame of mind.

How do you know which of these ideas will work for you?

At first, you probably don’t. You may need to try several of them to find out which ones help the most.

For me, the recipe that works most of the time is reward + peer pressure + inspiration. For example, if I’m trying to get a blog post written, I’ll tell myself that I can have a yummy hot beverage as a reward as soon as I get it done. If I’m still putting it off, I’ll make this my project on Get It Written Day, where I’ll have the benevolent peer pressure of others expecting me to report my progress at the next check-in. And if I’m having trouble getting started, I’ll look at examples I’ve previously clipped in Notion for inspiration.

Rather than trying to adopt another person’s approach, build your own unique solution by combining as many of the elements above as you need. Your personalized recipe for overcoming resistance will keep you moving forward.

This post was first published in 2017 and has been updated for 2026.