Do Something

Do Something

How often do you find yourself stuck? Maybe you’re staring at an empty screen. Maybe you’re not sure what to do with you team next. Perhaps you have forgotten the plot of your work and so you have zero motivation. The first thing you should know is that those feelings are completely normal. Everyone has them at some point, the question is, what do we do when we experience those feelings.

Blame

At the core, when we feel stuck we begin to blame. We blame ourselves, “maybe I’m not getting enough sleep”, “if only I had more time to for mindfulness.” We blame external forces, “I have writer’s block”, “the muses just aren’t speaking today”, “If I just had a different environment/computer/team…”

Or perhaps you don’t blame, you just check out. It’s not laziness and it’s not procrastination. It’s something else. Your mind simply won’t work to get the thoughts in order that you need that lead to success, so why try at all? “Better to wait until I’m fully functional again to get back to work.”

There may be legitimate factors for those feelings. Perhaps you do need rest. Perhaps you do need to find inspiration. But more often than those things, perhaps you just need to get started on something.

Diversity of Work

There’s an ancient rabbi who said, “if you work with your hands you sabbath with your mind and if you work with your mind you sabbath with your hands.” I’ve found this to be true for me when thinking about how best to rest, but I’ve also found it helpful for figuring out how to break through the barriers the keep me stuck. If I change to a different aspect of work than I have been focused on, it usually snaps me out of the funk in the other areas of my work too!

What I mean is this, many times with deadlines looming and increase weight of expectations from others I can get myopic in my focus to the point of fatigue. I’ve realized that if I keep pushing down that path, it’s the equivalent of banging my head against a wall…it’s frustrating, hurts my head, and accomplishes little. If, however, I shift to working on something else and let those thoughts go I feel better about getting something done and it “unsticks” the gears in mind on the thing I was focused on before. So I may quit working on a team problem and instead work website or on reading a book that has nothing to do with work. I shift from a logical thinking to creative thinking and that makes all the difference.

Confession

Actually, that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m fatigued with work. I’m frustrated that I can’t think clearly right now and so I’m not having great breakthroughs. I do need to rest. But, I can also shift gears and write a blog post. Something that might help others experience satisfaction and breakthrough from what I’m learning in my experiences. It may not be the best thing I’ve created, but that’s not really the point. The point is to do something that breaks through the feelings.

So what?

So, what are some things that you can identify in your life that may be a "gearshift” from the normal?