Introduction: Facing Hard Change
When COVID lockdowns hit in 2020, my coaching work came to a standstill.
The world was suddenly filled with uncertainty, disruption, and upheaval—classic symptoms of what Brad Stuhlberg describes in Masters of Change as “hard change.”
These are transitions that fundamentally alter your life trajectory, whether they’re planned or unexpected.
For many, hard change is a crucible moment; testing identity, resilience, and adaptability. It’s hard for good reasons:
It disrupts how we see ourselves.
It creates uncertainty and fear. Familiar routines collapse, and anxiety grows in ambiguous situations.
It forces us to navigate new paths. Emotional and cognitive overload are common.
Yet these challenges also present opportunities. As a coach specialising in performance and growth, I’ve spent over 25 years helping individuals and organisations adapt to hard change, often unlocking their highest performance in the process.
But it became clear to me that while personal coaching can help, tools for navigating hard change—particularly those promoting focus and intentionality—were sorely lacking.
That realisation led me to build ExcellGrowth, an app designed to help people not just survive hard change, but thrive through it.
The Deep Work Deficit
Adapting to hard change requires focus—what Cal Newport calls “deep work.” It’s the ability to eliminate distractions, sustain attention, and tackle complex challenges. Unfortunately, deep work has become a rare skill in today’s world.
As Johann Hari highlights in “Stolen Focus”, the average American office worker switches tasks every three minutes, and teenagers can barely focus for 65 seconds at a time. Tools like email and collaborative platforms such as Teams and Slack contribute to this fragmentation. Instead of helping us focus on what matters, these “infinity pools” often pull us further away from meaningful progress.
Organisations aren’t immune, either. Leaders often inject waves of change faster than their teams can absorb, while cultural norms stifle upward feedback. The result? Overwhelm, burnout, and a loss of focus—undermining the very performance the changes were meant to drive.
To fix this, we need to:
Train and coach people to build focus and resilience.
Develop better tools to support deep work.
Lockdown Inspiration
When lockdowns paused my coaching work, I took the opportunity to reflect on how to make hard change easier.
Beyond training and coaching, I saw the need for a digital toolkit that could help people:
Define clear goals and habits, with mechanisms to help maintain focus.
Track daily progress, reflecting on successes and challenges.
Conduct weekly reviews to identify gaps and adjust plans.
Solve obstacles to progress using proven frameworks.
Access a library of techniques for personal improvement.
Rather than outsourcing the idea, I decided to develop a prototype myself. With some coding experience, I embarked on a discovery project: using deep work principles to create an app that would help others—and me—navigate hard change.
Building ExcellGrowth
Between 2020 and 2024, I developed ExcellGrowth, a multi-platform app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. The process wasn’t easy. Building the app required simplifying the complex to the essentials; breaking down modules—starting with goals, then habits, and journaling—and tackling them one by one.
I was my own customer - I used the app to help develop the app. It helped me stay focused through setbacks and distractions. Reflecting daily on what I achieved, where I struggled, and what I needed to adjust was invaluable. This iterative approach helped me develop deep work capacity while refining the app for others.
The result is a toolkit grounded in real-world challenges and designed to empower users to:
Plan their most important goals and habits.
Log daily progress with honest self-reflection.
Conduct weekly reviews for continuous improvement.
Navigate obstacles with tailored frameworks.
Build the resilience and focus needed to thrive through change.
What’s Next?
This journey is ongoing. I’ve built ExcellGrowth to a point where it demonstrates proof of concept. Now, I need user feedback to refine it further and build its potential to create lasting impact.
If you’d like to support this mission, here’s how you can help:
Try the app. It’s available on the Apple App Store with a free 1-month trial (cancel anytime).
Share your feedback. Let me know what works, what doesn’t, and where you see opportunities for improvement.
Hard change isn’t going away, but with the right tools, I believe we can meet it head-on—and thrive.
References
“Masters of Change” by Brad Stuhlberg
“Stolen Focus” by Johann Hari
“Deep Work” by Cal Newport