The weight isn't the task

It's the hundred small decisions inside it.

“I reserved the next 2 hours for business development” sounds easy. It’s way harder than we often admit.

You sit down. You know you should follow up with the person you spoke to three weeks ago. You open the draft. You stop.

How do I word this without sounding like I’m chasing?

You want to post something on LinkedIn. You have a thought. You open the app. You stop.

What should I post? What’s the hook?

You meant to reach out to three people in your network. You have their names on a sticky note somewhere.

What do I even say? “Just checking in” sounds like nothing. Anything longer feels like I’m asking for something.

So the tab stays open. The draft stays saved. The sticky note gets moved to tomorrow.
And this is the part almost no one names: the weight isn’t the task.

The weight is that every small task comes with its own small decision. What to say. How to say it. How to phrase it so it lands. Whether it’s worth sending.

Any one of these is nothing. Five minutes. You could do it in the gap between meetings.
But they don’t arrive one at a time. They stack.
The follow-up. The post. The outreach. The CRM you keep meaning to clean. The newsletter you keep meaning to send. Each one waiting for you to decide what it should be.

And you’re also the person delivering the client work. Running the finances. Making the strategic calls. Deciding whether to take this contract or wait for a better one. Figuring out whether to raise your rate.

By the time you get to business development, the decision-making muscle is tired. So you postpone. And the thing you postponed compounds into tomorrow’s list, which was already more than full.

It’s the load of all those tiny decisions, adding up, making you feel like you’re carrying an elephant.
Every day, alone, in your own head.

The first AI generated picture I made because I want to use it mindfully.

What a ritual actually holds for you

When the weight is this kind of weight, it’s not fixed by another tactic. Or another tool. Or another webinar.

It’s fixed by a hour that holds the shape of the work for you.

An hour you don’t have to design from scratch. An hour with one area of focus, not three. An hour where the small things you do become visible, so by Friday you can still see them.

Inside IMMA we call it Promotion Monday. Promo for short. Here’s how to run it, whether or not you ever join us.

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The recipe

Block 60 minutes on Monday morning. The point of a rhythm is that it runs on the weeks you’re too busy, not the weeks you have spare time. That’s exactly when you need it most.

Start with a win from last week. Big or small. A conversation you were proud of. A message you finally sent. Getting through it at all. Gratitude is a better starting point than a to-do list.

Pick one area for this month:

🌱 Visibility. You’re doing great work, but no one knows. The right people aren’t discovering you.

💧 Nurturing. People show interest, then vanish. You don’t know how to follow up without it feeling like nagging.

🌾 Sales. You’re having great conversations, but they don’t convert. You hesitate to invite.

Pick one. The other two will still get attention. But your energy goes to one.

Sit with the reframe for your area. This changes how the work feels. And how it feels is what decides whether you’ll do it.

Visibility isn’t shouting. It’s inviting resonance. Not “look at me” but “here’s something you might be navigating too.”

Follow-up is a service, not a bother. It’s what maintenance the connection when we are all busy and overwhelmed.

Sales isn’t convincing. It’s surfacing clarity. You’re not trying to make them say yes. You’re helping them know what they need and whether it’s a fit.

Name one or two moves for the week. Be specific:

Message 5 people I’d genuinely like to reconnect with, with something useful.

Send one clear invitation to someone who recently showed interest: “Want to set up a time to explore this (challenge)?”

Then do them. Don’t plan more. Don’t research. Do the thing.

Track what you did. A running list. Notion, a Google doc, a spreadsheet, it doesn’t matter. The tool doesn’t do the work. The seeing does.

We provide a template but it’s best to adapt it to your tools.

Once a month, read the list. This is where the weight comes off. Not in the doing, in the seeing. You made the introductions. You sent the posts. You stayed in touch. We can’t control the result, but we can control the input. And when you can see the input, you can give yourself credit for it, spot what’s working, and notice what’s getting in the way.

Try it for a month. See what shifts.

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Where a room changes everything

The recipe works on your own. It works differently when done together with others.

Because the hardest part isn’t blocking the hour. It’s the decisions inside the hour. How do I phrase this so it doesn’t sound transactional? Is this follow-up caring or am I overdoing it? What’s the right way to invite this person into a conversation?

These are relational decisions. And the work most of us do, trust-based, long sales cycles, clients buying you, is all relational decisions. Which means the weight of business development is the weight of all those small relational calls. Made alone. Every week.

They get lighter when someone else is making theirs next to you.

You say I’m running a workshop next week and I don’t know how to make something actually happen afterward, and someone says drop the thank-you slide with five links. Use a QR code to one resource. One next step.

One small shift. A different outcome.

(That was Jess. Her work at Sporesight explores what fungi can teach us about shaping regenerative futures. Worth a look if you don’t know it.)

The wins of others pull you a bit higher. Someone’s question makes you realise you already know the answer. Someone’s resource saves you two hours.

That's what a room does every Monday. Business development done first thing in the week, with people whose work is different from yours but whose clients are the same kind. The rest of the week feels different because of it. Calmer. Lighter. Help is there when you need it.

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We run Promo Monday twice a week inside IMMA to cover time zones and caring responsibilities. Small groups of experienced independents, 10+ years behind them, working in climate, sustainability, health, and systems change.

This works when you show up. Not perfectly, not every week, but enough that the rhythm becomes yours. I can’t do the work for you. What I can do is hold the conditions that make it easier to show up: the hour is blocked, the structure is there, the people are there. You don’t have to design it or drag yourself through it alone.

If you want to run this on your own, everything above is yours. Take it. Adapt it. Run it for a month. The reframes are the valuable part, and they’re yours whether or not you ever join IMMA.

If you want to run it with others, the door for the April intake is open until the 28th. Here’s how we do this inside IMMA.

And if you’re reading this thinking this is me, hit reply. Happy to answer questions.

With care,
Lilli

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