I'm a project-oriented person. I enjoy the work. I enjoy the completion, the sense of success, checking it off the to-do list, even if only metaphorically.

But for the longest time, I struggled with what came after. A sense of emptiness. Confusion, sometimes. Even letdown.

It took me a while to understand why (that's a topic for another day). What matters here is what I learned to do about it, because this past week alone, four different owners described some version of the same thing to me: "I just finished this, and now I don't know what to do next. And it's stressing me out."

So here's what I told each of them, and what I tell anyone when this comes up.

When I finish a real project or reach a goal, not a task, but a week or month-long effort, I've taught myself to pause before starting the next thing. And I do it for two reasons.

The first is to appreciate the accomplishment. Most of us skip this step. We finish something, and the mind is already three items down the list. But there's nothing wrong with letting yourself feel good about achieving something. It's healthy, and it becomes fuel. Winning leads to more winning.

The second reason is where I see owners get themselves in trouble the fastest. The natural instinct when you complete something is to immediately move to the next thing. And the next thing that presents itself is rarely the right thing. It's just the nearest thing, the loudest opportunity, the request already sitting in your inbox.

What happens is momentum picks the goal for you.

And you can spend a month or a year executing well on something you never actively chose. That is the core tenet of the Numbers for Freedom framework, and the thing that led me to build it in the first place.

So when someone tells me they've just finished something and don't know what's next, here's what I say: it's okay to not know. Try being bored for a while and see what happens.

Practically, that looks like this. After you finish something significant, give yourself at least three or four days, or even a week or two, before committing to the next big thing. The day-to-day keeps running, clients get served, the work gets done. The only thing you're pausing is the strategic decision about what comes next.

Then let yourself be a little bored. With everything competing for our attention now, it's easy to never feel bored at all. But not knowing what to do next is just another way of giving your brain space to sit with itself. And when it does, it starts to wander, to ask questions, to reach for answers. Real answers. Like the kind that lead to real projects.

When that happens, note where it wanders. Write it down or record a voice note, but resist the temptation to act yet. Just keep the list. After a week or two, look at the patterns, the ideas, the recurring thoughts.

That's usually where you'll find what comes next. And because of how you got there, it tends to carry a lot more meaning than whatever you would have rushed into.

If you're sitting in this exact spot right now, just finished something and unsure what's next, hit reply and tell me what you wrapped up. I read everything.

~ Nolan

P.S. If you know someone who just finished something big, this might be a good one to forward.