Do the Next Thing
But what if you don’t know what that is?
There's a particular kind of stuck that has nothing to do with having too little to do. It's the opposite. It’s the news that won't quiet down, the inbox that keeps filling, three decisions sitting on you and none of them feel small, and underneath all of it is a low hum telling you that you should be handling this better than you are. So you stall out. You can't tell which thing to pick up first, and picking wrong feels worse than picking nothing.
I know that feeling, and I know the advice people reach for when they're in it. Just do the next thing. It's good advice. It's what got me through the hardest years of my life. But it has a quiet assumption buried inside it, and the assumption is the whole problem.
When I talk about doing the next thing, I mean something specific. A few days after I was assaulted, I went to the police station, and the detective tore a piece of paper out of a notebook and handed me a list of things to do. I'm a list person by nature and I run a business on lists. That torn-out page became the thing I held onto. I did what was on it, added to it, did the next thing and the next, and for a long stretch that was how I kept moving when nothing else made sense.
Here's what made it work, though: someone handed me the list. The next thing was already named. I didn't have to figure out what it was. I just had to do it.
The hard version, the one nobody hands you a notebook page for, is when you can't see what the next thing is at all.
Why does "do the next thing" stop working when you're overwhelmed?
Because the advice assumes you can already see the next thing, and overwhelm is exactly the state where you can't.
When you're flooded, you have too many options. They all feel urgent, and you've lost the thread of which one actually matters. Decision fatigue is real. Every choice pulls from the same tank, and when the tank is low, even small choices feel enormous.
I feel this most in the smallest moments. Chad and I will be heading out for a walk and I'll ask, "Which way do you want to go?" and he'll say, "Oh, I hadn't thought about it. Which way do you want to go?" Or I'll ask what he feels like for dinner and he'll say, "I don't know, what are you thinking?" Reasonable answers, both of them. He genuinely doesn't care which direction we walk, and he's happy to eat whatever. But there are days when it lands wrong, and I feel myself go tense before I even understand why.
I'm not asking because I want his opinion. I'm asking because I've made a hundred decisions already and I don't have one more in me. I'm handing him the question so he'll carry it for a minute, but he doesn't always know that. From where he's standing, he's being easygoing. From where I'm standing, the easygoing answer just handed the decision right back.
That's the state "just do the next thing" walks into. The instruction assumes there's a clear next thing waiting to be picked up. But when even "which way do you want to walk" feels like too much, the next thing isn't obvious. It's buried under everything else. Do which thing? That's the part I can't answer. That's why I'm standing here.
What do you do when you can't tell what the next thing is?
Make it smaller. Shrink the next thing until it's small enough that you don't need to be certain to do it.
When I couldn't see a clear next step, I made the step smaller. The next thing didn't have to be the right thing or the important thing or the thing that fixed anything. It just had to be something I could do without arguing myself out of it. Some days that was a real task. Some days it was a workout I didn't want to do. On the worst days, the next thing was getting out of bed, and that counted. On those days, it was the whole list.
Going small is being honest about what the moment can hold. A small thing you finish does more for you than a big thing you stare at.
Isn't taking a small step just avoiding the real problem?
No. Movement produces the clarity you were waiting for. You move first, and the clarity follows.
This is the part I had backwards for years. I thought clarity came first and action came second: figure out the plan, then execute it. But in the seasons that mattered most, it ran in the opposite order. I'd do one small thing, and the next thing would become visible only because I'd moved. The view changes when you take a step. You can't see around the corner from where you're standing, and no amount of staring at the corner will show you what's past it. You have to walk to it.
I think this is often why great ideas fail in the entrepreneur space. The idea is fine. The founder keeps refining it in private, holding out for proof it will work before anyone gets to see it. They only learn whether it works once it's out in front of real people, and while they wait for certainty, the window closes.
Waiting to feel sure before you act sounds responsible. Often it's just a more comfortable way to stay stuck. You don't owe the moment certainty. You owe it the next small, honest move.
How does this work when other people are counting on you?
The same way, and it matters more, because someone in charge who freezes teaches everyone watching to freeze too.
I've run a business for nearly a decade, and I've watched plenty of capable people get stuck in front of a problem with no clean answer. They knew plenty. They were waiting for the kind of certainty the situation was never going to give them. When you're the one others look to, the pull to wait for the perfect call is even stronger, because being wrong feels public. But a team can move forward on an imperfect decision. It can't move forward on no decision. The smallest honest action, named out loud, gives everyone permission to start moving again. Clarity tends to show up after the room is in motion, not before.
I still don't always know what the next thing is. Some mornings I open my phone and the world is on fire and my own to-do list might as well be written in another language. When that happens, I've stopped trying to think my way to the right answer before I move. I get up. I make the coffee. I answer the one email I can actually answer. And more often than not, by the time the cup is empty, the next thing has quietly shown up. I was already moving when it did.
If this is landing, I wrote a free, short companion piece for the list-makers, the planners, and the ones who handle things, about what comes after the list runs out.
Jessi Bixler is an entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and the author of The Story We Share (Next Thing Press, 2025), a memoir about the ripple effects of sexual assault through a family and the systems that respond to harm. She speaks to leadership audiences and advocacy organizations on what people carry and how it shapes how we lead.
Get the book | Subscribe to the newsletter | Book Jessi to speak