Reduce overwhelm by planning your private practice in projects Successful businesses don’t do the same thing all year long. They tend to work in focussed projects. This helps reduce the overwhelm and ensure that all your energy goes to something that will really help your ICAs.
To plan your projects you first need to be clear on your specialism so https://psychologists.drrosie.co.uk/the-business-of-psychology/why-every-psychologist-and-therapist-needs-a-specialism/ (go back to the podcast on finding your specialism) if you haven’t already given that some serious thought.
Then you need to decide on which ideal clients you want to support this year. In the training, I have been doing with the school for social entrepreneurs it has been really noticeable to me that the bigger social enterprises often service a few different groups with different projects. They aren’t trying to catch everyone with the same offer. So for example, the Heart of BS13 project has cooking, gardening and therapy projects all aimed at helping people with different needs. 
https://heartofbs13.org.uk/ (https://heartofbs13.org.uk/)
It got me thinking that while we need to specialise in our clinical work we don’t need to make every project that we work on fit the exact same client. For example, you might have a specialism in workplace trauma and provide therapy for people who need it, online courses for managers that want to support staff who have been through trauma and in-person workshops for students who need to learn about workplace trauma. Those are three projects you could be working on in 2021 that all relate to the exact same specialism are for target different ideal clients. 
If you are running a business on your own, or with only admin support though, I do believe we should only focus on one project at a time. If we don’t it is hard to make any project as impactful as we want it to be.
So what “projects: could you focus on in 2021?What could you do this year that relates to your specialism and would help your ICAs in DIFFERENT ways?
Brainstorm anything you can think of that might help your ICA
Eg. 
Downloadables             1:1 therapy
Books                      Workshops
Podcasts                   Supervision
Online Courses             Webinars
What does each project need?We are all familiar with Maslow (1954). We need to think about the needs we have as people and business owners and the practical needs of the projects we are creating before we decide when to do them.
If you have unmet deficiency needs you will never be motivated to achieve the self-fulfilment needs. 
If you need money coming into your practice quickly you will need to prioritise projects that can do that for you. 
In my experience, for most of us, this is 1:1 therapy or supervision. Other projects tend to take more time to make more money as we need to spend time building an audience.
Action:Map out your projects on a big piece of paper or white board.
Think about what you need in your business, what you need to make the project work
and how intense YOU will find the work. 
This is personal so I can’t tell you your intensity scores. 
For me, I find I am very drained after a therapy session (even though I love it) so therapy is 10/10 intensity. Whereas I can spend a day prepping a session like this and feel totally energised so that gets a lower score for me. 
Write the needs for each one and an intensity score under the project
Pick your projectsNow pick the projects that you intend to focus on this year. For now, just choose four and make sure they are a balance of high...