By Austin Erkl, Business & Accountability Coach
The modern digital entrepreneur often lives a dual life. On the surface, there is the polished brand, the inspiring content, and the thriving community. Behind the scenes, however, there is a complex, often chaotic engine of administrative tasks, content editing, scheduling, and constant context-switching.
In my recent coaching session with Jenny, a brilliant psychologist and the founder of the Her Next Era brand, we pulled back the curtain on this exact dynamic. Jenny is a highly capable entrepreneur who has successfully launched her own physical journal and cultivated a massive online community. Yet, like many high-achievers, she found herself battling the clock, fighting digital distractions, and underestimating the true “cost” of content creation.
This article breaks down the core themes from our session, offering actionable insights for any creator or business owner struggling to bridge the gap between their visionary ideas and their daily execution.
1. The Paradox of the Self-Disciplined Leader
One of the most fascinating aspects of coaching other coaches or psychologists is that they already know the theory. Jenny is a psychologist who understands cognitive behavioral tools, habit formation, and emotional regulation. She created a highly structured journal specifically designed to help women build accountability and community.
Yet, knowing the path and walking it are two different things.
During our week-one review, Jenny noted a significant shift in her productivity simply because of our new accountability container. She admitted, “I was like, oh my God, I cannot disappoint him. And so I’ve been really… working on that and being on top of it”.
This highlights a profound psychological truth: Self-accountability has limits. When we are only accountable to ourselves, it is incredibly easy to negotiate our boundaries. We tell ourselves that we can push a task to tomorrow, or that we deserve to watch one more episode of a show, because there are no immediate external consequences. However, when we introduce an external observer—a coach, a partner, or a public commitment—our adherence skyrockets.
In coaching, we often refer to the science of accountability. Studies and behavioral data suggest that simply committing to a goal gives you a baseline chance of success, but knowing someone is actively watching your progress can push your completion rate closer to 100%.
To facilitate this, we didn’t use a complex, clunky project management software. We used a simple, shared Apple Note. Every day, Jenny had a binary checklist. The beauty of the shared note is that it removes the barrier to entry; it doesn’t require logging into a new platform. It is native to her phone, and she knows that I am checking it daily. She noted that she refused to check things off just to appease the system, maintaining strict honesty about what was and wasn’t accomplished. That integrity is the bedrock of real transformation.
2. The “Invisible Tasks” of Content Creation
A major breakthrough in our session was identifying why Jenny felt stressed and compressed for time, even on days when she technically completed her to-do list.
When creators schedule “filming” in their calendar, they often block out the literal time it takes to speak into the camera. In Jenny’s mind, a video shoot should take two hours. But this calculation ignores the “invisible tasks”—the preparatory and administrative work required to make the creative work happen.
Jenny astutely observed, “I feel like, like I have to, I’m a girl. So like, I have to do my makeup, do my hair. I have to like, make it look cute… I don’t account like the getting ready for it, the setting it up, the having it at the perfect time for the perfect lighting”.
This is the Getting Ready Tax.
When you don’t account for the 60 to 90 minutes of aesthetic and technical preparation (setting up tripods, adjusting ring lights, doing hair and makeup), a task scheduled for 1:00 PM doesn’t actually start until 2:30 PM. By that time, the perfect natural lighting might be fading, requiring additional artificial lights, which adds more setup time. This delay causes the entire day’s schedule to cascade backward, ultimately bleeding into the evening and disrupting sleep.
Furthermore, the post-production process is a massive time-eater. Editing in apps like CapCut, selecting the right fonts, syncing trending audio, and distributing the content across platforms (Instagram, TikTok) takes exponentially longer than the filming itself.
The solution is not to work faster, but to schedule more realistically. We discussed the necessity of dedicating specific, uninterrupted blocks of time—or even entire “Admin Days”—solely to scheduling and editing. By separating the “creative” on-camera work from the “technical” post-production work, we reduce cognitive switching penalties and create a more predictable workflow.
3. The Delegation Dilemma: When to Outsource and When to Own It
In the entrepreneurial space, the standard advice is almost always: Outsource everything that isn’t your zone of genius. Hire a Virtual Assistant (VA), get a video editor, and buy back your time.
However, in the trenches of a highly personal, aesthetic-driven brand, delegation is not a magic wand.
Initially, I had suggested that Jenny outsource her editing and Shopify admin tasks to a VA to relieve her overwhelm. But during her execution week, she had a vital realization: training someone else to do the task perfectly would take just as much, if not more, time than doing it herself.
“I was like, it’s going to take me the same time to like hire someone, find someone, ask them the right questions, give them the data and stuff where it’s like… I can walk through it with chat GPT,” she explained. Furthermore, her brand relies heavily on her specific aesthetic—the exact font, the specific cut, the overall vibe. Passing that intuitive understanding to a new, potentially entry-level editor requires a massive upfront investment of time and energy to build Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
As a coach, it is crucial to recognize when textbook advice doesn’t fit the client’s current season. I acknowledged that my projection of how delegation helped me didn’t perfectly align with the complex, vision-heavy brand she is building.
Until she reaches a phase where she can hire a high-level, intuitive team member who already understands her brand language, she has to own these tasks. But she must own them efficiently through aggressive batching, rather than letting them slowly drain her daily energy.
4. Dopamine Traps and Context Switching
Even the most disciplined entrepreneurs fall prey to the modern digital environment, which is engineered to hijack our attention. For Jenny, this manifested in two specific areas: her morning routine and her workouts.
The Morning Drift
Jenny noted that her filming schedule often gets derailed because she spends her mornings until 11:00 AM or 12:00 PM doing “personal things”—workouts, hikes, errands, and house tasks. While personal care is essential, allowing these tasks to expand indefinitely means her core revenue-generating activity (filming) gets pushed to the afternoon, triggering the cascade of stress we discussed earlier.
The Workout Scroll
A more insidious time-eater was the phone scroll during workout rest periods. Jenny identified that during a HIIT workout, she would pick up her phone during a mini-break. That quick check would spiral into 10 to 15 minutes of scrolling.
“I’m working out for two and a half hours, and then I’m like… I allocated an hour to this,” she realized.
This is the classic dopamine loop. Once the brain gets a hit of novelty from social media, it resists returning to the physically demanding task of working out. Furthermore, looking at a screen during a physical rest period prevents the mind from actually resting. It induces context switching.
As I shared with her, heavy multitasking and constant context-switching can temporarily lower functional IQ more than losing a night’s sleep, as the brain is constantly in a state of re-calibration. It can lead to a massive loss in overall daily productivity. The solution here is strict physical boundaries: the phone must go into “jail” or strict airplane mode during the workout. Out of sight, out of mind.
5. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination and the Bridgerton Effect
Perhaps the most universally relatable struggle we discussed was bedtime discipline. Jenny admitted that her biggest failure of the week was going to bed too late.
This wasn’t always because she was working. One evening, her friend was in town, and they put on the show Bridgerton. Jenny told herself she would only watch 20 minutes of an hour-long episode. Unsurprisingly, she got hooked, watched the whole thing, and went to bed an hour later than planned.
In psychology, there is a term for this: Revenge Bedtime Procrastination.
When high-achievers feel that they didn’t get enough “me time” or unstructured leisure during the day, they will subconsciously steal that time from their sleep at night. They stay up late scrolling, watching Netflix, or reading, as a way to reclaim agency over their time.
Jenny also noted that she takes long, completely necessary breaks in the evening to ride her horse—sometimes from 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM. She then comes home, makes food, relaxes, and suddenly it’s 9:30 PM. At 9:30 PM, she tries to sit back down and wrap up her work tasks, pushing her bedtime well past midnight.
This fragmented schedule—working, resting, working again late at night—disrupts the circadian rhythm and guarantees she will wake up groggy, making the next morning’s “getting ready” phase even harder.
To fix this, we have to look at the macro-schedule. If 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM is her non-negotiable joy (the barn), she needs to structure her day so that 5:00 PM represents the hard stop for her work. By front-loading the technical and administrative tasks into dedicated blocks earlier in the day, she can go to the barn knowing the day is done, completely eliminating the need to re-open her laptop at 10:00 PM.
6. The Clean Slate: Protecting the Weekend
In hustle culture, there is a toxic narrative that true entrepreneurs work 24/7. They grind on weekends and sleep when they’re dead.
Jenny and I took a completely opposite stance. When I asked her if I should push her to check in and work on the weekends, she was clear about her boundaries.
“I do think it’s good for me to take time off on the weekend,” she said. “I’m at the barn. I always see my friends… I just don’t like doing admin things on a weekend”.
This is not a lack of dedication; this is sustainable pacing. If you are operating a high-output personal brand, managing clients, recording podcasts, and designing products, your cognitive load is immense. The weekend is the necessary “clean slate” that allows the brain to recover.
We agreed that while there are certainly “crunch times”—like her product launch in late 2024 where she worked all weekends—that should be the exception, not the rule. By utilizing our weekly accountability check-ins, she is forced to rally and complete her tasks by Friday. This means when she goes to dinner with friends or heads to the barn on Saturday, she is doing so with a clear conscience. She isn’t thinking about the CapCut edits she left unfinished.
True work-life balance isn’t about working less; it’s about working decisively so that when you rest, you can actually rest.
Conclusion: Doing the Damn Thing
Coaching isn’t about providing a secret, magical formula that suddenly makes work effortless. It is about holding up a mirror to the client’s behaviors, celebrating their wins, and gently but firmly calling out their blind spots.
In just one week, Jenny proved that she has the grit to execute at a high level. She successfully navigated the friction of editing, the technical hurdles of Shopify, and the time-consuming reality of being a camera-ready creator.
Moving forward, our strategy is simple:
- Batch the friction: Move all editing and scheduling to a dedicated “Admin Day”.
- Account for the invisible: Schedule the “getting ready” tax into the calendar.
- Protect the baseline: Implement strict phone boundaries during workouts and enforce a hard bedtime.
Entrepreneurship is a marathon of micro-decisions. It’s choosing to close the TikTok app after a set time. It’s choosing to push through the annoying administrative task rather than avoiding it. And sometimes, it’s choosing to hire a coach to look over your shoulder and simply say, “I see what you’re doing. Keep going.”
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