Look around at your environment, roles, goals, vision and see what is disrupting your ability to make forward progress. A well defined problem is half solved.
In my most recent episode of feeling stuck, it was a specific type of being stuck, it was a lack of focus, a clouded idea of what is important, a scattered mind.
So I looked around at my environment and this is what I found.
- Unread emails scattered about.
- Junk mail filling in the space between important information and tasks.
- Flagged emails from months ago that aren't relevant.
- Project outlines with missing information and overdue tasks.
I had let myself become completely unorganized, I couldn't decide what to work on because I couldn't decide what tasks I had to do and assign them priority.
How I got traction and started moving forward again.
- Reviewing my vision of how want to perform in each of my roles. Getting an understanding of what I want my future self to be.
- Spending 15 minutes reviewing my flagged emails and clearing the ones that do not matter or are done.
- Reviewing emails going back only 1 month, everything older just gets archived.
- Updating my todo list and prioritizing those items, clearing items that do not align with my goals, adding a few to each day in the week to complete many of them of the week.
- Updating my project outlines to understand where I am and what needs to be done next.
The key for me was gaining clarity of what I want to accomplish in the context of my why. This allowed me do declutter and shed a lot of little tasks that I felt like I had to do but realized they were not going to contribute to my desired outcome.
The MetaphorX4 is simply a road trip, when planning a road trip we often start with a reason for going and then start adding a lot of little stops along the way. If you keep going like this you'll get lost in all the little things and never make it to your destination. At some point you realize you have to prioritize and cut out a lot of little stops. After that you can easily see how you can get to where you want to go.
During another episode of feeling stuck and unproductive I realized that my vision for my career role had faded and I was no longer excited about it.
I had to pause and think about what my vision was and look for ways to spruce it up. If you don't have a vision or have one that doesn't excite you for one of your roles, it will be really hard to make progress in that area.
How I got traction and started moving forward again.
- I found that my vision was good but the language I had used to describe it was not exciting enough. I had to use words that make feel energized.
- Sometimes you need to create a bigger, better vision to get excited about it.
- If you look at your vision and realize that you have just achieved it you need to create a new vision. Once I bought a house the goal of buying a house was no longer motivating.
Tools for getting unstuck
Grab an easy win! - Look for that low hanging fruit.
Read your category visions - if they don't get you excited, think about what it would take to get you excited and write it into your vision.
See what you can get rid of... todos, tasks, goals, anything that feels like something you have to do, but ultimately doesn't bring you closer to that exciting vision.
This post will be continually updated with new episodes of getting stuck and the solutions that got me back on my way.
