So, you wanna know how to go on, huh? Been there. Seriously. There was this one period, felt like I was trying to walk through concrete. Just… stuck.
I was knee-deep in this project, something I’d been dreaming about for ages. Poured everything into it. Late nights, early mornings, you know the drill. And then, WHAM. Hit a wall. A massive, invisible wall. Nothing I tried worked. My motivation just packed its bags and left without even a goodbye note.
Honestly, I was this close to just trashing the whole thing. Kept thinking, “What’s the point? This is going nowhere.” Felt like a total failure, you know? My brain was just a mess of “can’t do it” and “give up.”
So, what did I actually do to get moving again?
It wasn’t some magic trick. First, I just… stopped. I know, sounds counterintuitive when you’re trying to ‘go on,’ but I just stepped away from the problem. Completely. Told myself, “Okay, brain, you get a vacation from this specific nightmare.”
Then, I started doing things that had absolutely nothing to do with what was stressing me out. My list looked something like this:
- Went for super long walks, no destination in mind. Just walked.
- Tried to learn how to bake bread. Made a few rocks, eventually got something edible.
- Cleaned my entire apartment. Like, deep cleaned. Scrubbed things I didn’t know could be scrubbed.
- Binge-watched some dumb TV shows. No thinking required.
The point wasn’t to be productive in other areas. It was just to give my mind a different track to run on for a while.
After a few days, maybe a week, I didn’t just jump back in. No way. I sort of… tiptoed back. I’d just look at the project. Open the files, stare at them for five minutes, then close them. No pressure to do anything.
Then, I started making tiny, almost laughably small changes. Like, “Okay, today I’ll just change the color of this one button.” Or “I’ll just write one sentence.” Seriously, the bar was on the floor.
And you know what? Slowly, painstakingly slowly, things started to unstick. It wasn’t a sudden burst of inspiration. It was more like thawing out, bit by bit. The big lesson for me was that ‘going on’ isn’t always about a heroic push. Sometimes it’s about the quiet retreat, the gentle restart, and the permission to do very, very little.
It’s about finding that tiny little thread and just pulling on it, even if you don’t know where it leads. Just keep pulling.
How do I know this actually works?
Because that project? I eventually finished it. It wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t what I initially imagined in some ways, but it was done. And more importantly, I learned that getting stuck is part of the deal. The ‘how to go on’ part isn’t about avoiding the stuck moments, but about having a few rough tools to use when you land in one. And sometimes, the best tool is just giving yourself a break and then starting small. Real small.
So yeah, that’s my take on it. No fancy theories, just what I did when I felt like I couldn’t take another step.
