Stuck? Tricks for Removing the Glue
Posted by Shawn on November 4, 2008
When you look at your list of tasks and projects there will always be a few items of which the status never seems to change. It may be having a difficult conversation, preparing that report that you are afraid will be just too difficult, or painting the living room. You think about this item day and night and keep trying to put it out of your mind, but it continues to nag both your subconscious and conscious thoughts day and night, night and day. Each night before you fall asleep you curse yourself for not completing or even starting the task; each morning you try to convince yourself that today will be the day you accomplish it.
How do you remove the glue and get unstuck?
Write it down. The task, the problem, what resolution of the task or problem will look like, the next step you can take to move this forward, all the steps you need to take to complete the task, steps that will be easy, steps that will be difficult, steps that you are not sure of what to do, and steps you have already accomplished.
Once you do this something happens. You will more clearly see all the sub-tasks that you need to do to complete this task, and you will most likely find that only one or two are the ones holding you back. Or, you may realize that none of the steps will be difficult to complete individually and you can knock off a few at a time.
The challenge that remains is to attack and tackle the difficult steps as soon as you can. You can ignore them and hope they go away, but it is always a much better plan to accept the challenge and complete all the tasks including the most difficult.
Will this get you unstuck? It will still be up to you, but by breaking the task or project into steps you will find that only a few of them are tightly glued. Attack these steps with tenacity and complete them, and you will not only find that you will be able to quickly complete the task or project, but you will sleep better and wake up refreshed.
Or at least until you have another stuck task you need to tackle!
