Walk away

This lesson took me years to learn, and I still sometimes fail to apply it, even though it is soooo simple. When I am well into a problem or project and I get stuck, I can get stuck for days or weeks. It is as if the problem is challenging my entire worth as a human being. The days seem a little darker. I obsess over it. I think about it when I’m going to bed. I wake up with it squatting like some evil gnome in my head.

Of course, there is no flow in this state. The ego is super-involved, and you feel like you’re in a fight. Creativity suffers. I tend to try the same solutions over and over, with perhaps small variations, expecting them to magically start working. They don’t. I am miserable, but at the same time I can’t tear myself away.

What you need at this point is a hard reset. It feels like a supreme act of will, but you have to abandon that problem. Ask yourself if there is any way you can get around it. I have been stuck on problems that were totally unnecessary – by simply shifting my goals I could let go of them altogether. Supposing this isn’t the case, you still need to get far away from the demon that is living in your brain now. Don’t take an hour’s break, take a week. Go get some sun. Have a stiff drink. Then, go work on another, unrelated problem, someplace else. If you don’t shift location and give your mind something else to wrestle with, you will be thinking about the old problem before you know it.

I’m not saying the solution is going to magically appear, though it might. I’m just saying that more conscious thought is not the answer here. You have to create space. The best way to do this is to get into flow on something else. Even if nothing else, you’ll feel better.