The One Question I Ask When I am Stuck
🗓️ MARINA MIDDLETON POSTED TO THE GROUP CHAT June 2, 2026
Leadership & Identity | Career & Personal Branding
Being stuck does not look like doing nothing. It looks like the opposite. It looks like answering forty emails, sitting in six meetings, saying yes to three new projects, and ending the day exhausted with the business in exactly the same place it was that morning.
I have had that week. More than once. And when I am in it, I have one question I ask myself before I do anything else.
What is my one single job right now?
Not my ten jobs. Not my whole to-do list. The one job that, if I do it, makes everything else easier. The one job that actually matters for the business and for the specific seat you are sitting in.
For me, right now, that job is revenue. So every call I get on, every meeting I take, every conversation I have, I am asking the same thing: is this moving the needle on revenue or not? If it is, it gets my full energy. If it is not, it can wait, it can go to someone else, or it does not happen at all.
Being busy and being stuck can look identical from the outside. The difference is whether the one thing that matters is getting any of your attention.
Here is the part that trips people up. Your one job is not permanent. It changes depending on where the business is and what your role actually is. Six months ago my one job might have been something else entirely. A year from now it will be something different again.
The skill is not picking the right answer once. It is taking the step back to ask the question at all, especially in the weeks when you feel too busy to ask it.
So the next time you feel busy and stuck at the same time, do not start by adding more to the list. Look at everything on your plate and find the one job that makes everything else easier. Then put everything you have behind it. Blinders on.
Run this the next time you feel stuck:
Write down everything you are carrying this week. All of it.
Go line by line and ask: does this make everything else easier, or does it just keep me busy?
Pick the one job the business and your specific seat need most right now. Not three. One.
Put it on your calendar first, before anything else gets to claim your time.
For everything that is not the one job: delay it, hand it off, or let it go.
Come back to the question when the business shifts, because your one job will shift with it.
