Why You’re Not Lazy—You’re Just Doing Too Much Alone

“Women aren’t burning out because they’re not capable. They’re burning out because they’re doing too much, with too little support.”— Dr. Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist

If you’ve ever looked at your unfinished to-do list and wondered if you were the problem, you’re not alone. In fact, you're in the majority.

A recent study by FreshBooks found that 60% of female solopreneurs experience burnout, citing administrative overload and decision fatigue as major contributors. And that's before factoring in caregiving responsibilities, financial strain, or the constant context-switching between platforms.

The Productivity Myth

We’re told success comes down to better discipline, time blocking, or “just using this one app.”But in reality, most of us are working in fragmented, uncoordinated systems that drain more energy than they save.

According to a report from Asana, workers switch between apps more than 1,100 times a day—and that number jumps for solopreneurs managing both their business and household.That’s not multitasking. That’s micro-fracturing your focus.

“The modern workday is like trying to solve a puzzle with pieces scattered across five different tables.”— Cal Newport, author of Deep Work

🤯 You’re Not Lazy—You’re Systemically Overloaded

Here’s what solopreneurs are juggling daily:

• Email (Gmail, Outlook… sometimes both)

• Messaging (Slack, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs)

• Project tracking (Notion, Trello, sticky notes… again, sometimes all three)

• Calendar tools

• Newsletters

• AI tools

• Community platforms

• And personal/family scheduling layered on top

This isn’t laziness. It’s a system problem, not a personal failing.

And systems, unlike people, can be optimized.

🛠 What Helps (and What Doesn’t)

What doesn’t help:

• Downloading more tools

• Setting even tighter routines

• “Pushing through”

  
  

What does help:

• Reducing tool-switching

• Prioritizing based on energy, not just urgency

• Using systems that adapt to your workflow—not the other way around

In the book Essentialism, Greg McKeown writes:

“We can’t do everything. But we can make the wisest possible investment of our time and energy to operate at our highest point of contribution.”

But first, we need clarity. And clarity doesn’t come from doing more—it comes from making sense of what we’ve already got.

✨ One Thing to Try Today

Take inventory. For just one day, track how many different platforms or apps you touch.Write them down.Notice where time gets lost—not in doing the work, but in coordinating it.

That’s your clue. That’s your bottleneck.

PS. We’re building a system to help with exactly this—but this post isn’t about that. It’s about you seeing your own patterns clearly. And maybe, letting go of the idea that your exhaustion means you’re doing it wrong.

You're not broken. Your setup is.