The Problem With Business Models That Ignore Your Life

Most online business advice assumes one thing: that you can drop your current reality and build from a clean slate.

That’s why so much of it feels out of reach. It’s designed for people without caregiving responsibilities, chronic health conditions, unpredictable energy, or even just a deep desire to keep evenings and weekends sacred.

And if you try to fit yourself into that mold, one of two things happens:

  1. You burn out trying to keep up.

  2. You give up because it was never realistic to begin with.

Why “Ideal Day” Planning Doesn’t Deliver

You’ve probably done it—sat down with a worksheet and mapped out your “ideal day.”
It’s a nice vision exercise, but it’s useless if your reality is full of moving parts you can’t control.

Instead of imagining the perfect, interruption-free day, ask yourself:

  • What’s my favorite day within my current circumstances?

  • Which parts of that day make it feel good?

  • How can I build my business so those elements happen more often?

This small shift keeps you grounded in reality—and makes it far more likely that you’ll actually follow through.

Designing for Your Actual Life

Once you’ve defined your favorite day within your current reality, use it as your business design blueprint:

1. Align your offers with your energy.
If your peak focus time is before noon, don’t book client calls in the morning. If your energy dips midweek, cluster admin work there instead of creative projects.

2. Protect your non-negotiables.
Set boundaries before you’re tempted to break them. If evenings are family time, block them out now—before a “just this once” exception becomes a habit.

3. Plan for unpredictability.
If you have health conditions, caregiving duties, or fluctuating energy, bake flexibility into your deadlines, client communication, and deliverables.

The Payoff

When you design a business around your actual life instead of an idealized version, you:

  • Reduce stress and decision fatigue

  • Make your business sustainable for the long haul

  • Increase your capacity for creative, high-value work

And most importantly—you actually want to keep running it.

Final Thought

Your business isn’t a separate life. It’s part of the one you’re already living. Build it to fit that life, and you’ll stop feeling like you have to choose between the two.

If you want to explore more ways to step away from unsustainable business models, I dive deeper into this in my conversation with Megan Dowd on Here’s What I Learned.

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