Are You Avoiding the Real Work?

It’s easy to stay busy. To check tasks off a list, attend meetings, answer emails, and feel the temporary rush of productivity.

Coaching Tip -

But busyness isn’t the same as progress. The real work, the work that leads to meaningful change, fulfillment, and growth, is often the work we avoid.

The real work asks more of you. It’s not found in surface-level activity, but in honest self-reflection, in confronting uncomfortable truths, and in doing what doesn’t offer immediate reward. It’s the conversation you’ve been putting off. The decision you’ve been delaying. The commitment you haven’t fully made.

Real work doesn’t scream for attention. It waits quietly behind your excuses, distractions, and justifications. And you know it’s there. You feel it in the pit of your stomach. You hear it in the silence when the noise fades. You see it in the gap between who you are and who you know you could be.

Avoiding the real work might keep you comfortable, but it won’t move you forward. It won’t stretch you into the version of yourself that’s waiting on the other side of effort, discipline, and truth.

So ask yourself, today, not someday, what real work are you avoiding? And what might happen if you finally did it?