Getting Unstuck

Whining, Blue Smoke & the Mechanics of Getting Unstuck

Merlin Mann — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:40:00 -0400

I’ve been working on a bunch of (non-43 Folders-related) stuff lately, but I started feeling that hankering to come back and write something new here. To get the engine started, I went through some old posts and turned up a few (oddly self-inspiring) ideas that I want to re-share. The topic? “Getting unstuck.”

Hack your way out of writer’s block - “Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.”
Solve problems by writing a note to yourself - “Seriously, open up your email program, type in your own email address, then choose a brilliant subject line that perfectly encapsulates your particular problem.”
Do a fast “mind-sweep” - “And as long as you let that stuff accumulate as chunky deposits on the edges of your perception, it’s very unlikely it’ll get done since — well — they won’t get done until they’re been captured and properly started, right?”
Cringe-Busting your TODO list - “Per cringe item, think honestly about why you’re freaked out about it. Seriously. What’s the hang-up? (Fear of failure? Dreading bad news? Angry you’re already way overdue?)”
Patching your personal suck - “Every patch that fails teaches you a little something that might come in handy some day. Mistakes, as they say, can be a buddhist gift.”

I guess all I’d add — since it’s on my mind today — is that I’m learning how much it pays to listen whenever you hear yourself mentally whining.

First off, even when it’s yourself, nobody likes a whiner. So it’s worthwhile to be mindful about the extent to which your internal monologue is becoming personally insufferable. As with B.O. and a lack of flossing, the chances are good that others have already noticed things about you before you have, so — you know — congratulations on making it to the party.

But, second, and perhaps more importantly, that whining should be telling you something. Whining is the ~~white~~ blue smoke in your tailpipe that lets you know you’re burning mental oil. It means you’re unconsciously devoting cycles to something that you can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t be spending time thinking about. Otherwise, why would it be bothering you, right? You’d be either extricated or done with it.

Once you pinpoint where that whine’s coming from, that’s the perfect opportunity to decide what the hell the hang-up is. Because if it’s worth whining and fussing about, it’s worth deciding what obstacle (obstruction?) in either the Real World or your own mind is keeping something from happening.

And once that obstacle is identified and out there, ample methods exist for helping you execute in a way that’s sane and sensible. But you can’t complete a task you don’t understand, so grant yourself the personal luxury of unpacking the problem behind the problem.

Put automotively? Obsessively adding a new quart of oil every day not only doesn’t fix your smoke problem: it feeds it. Instead, just use the smoke as a warning that it’s nigh time to trace the cracks in your engine.

As for me? Yeah. Now I’m feeling unstuck and a little less whiny. So, thanks. Onward.

Edit 2008-04-12 11:07:28 - Reader wemerson was kind enough to correct me on my metaphor in this post. Turns out that my use of “white smoke” was inaccurate; the smoke would be blue. Many thanks — and I made the correction. Learn more about smoke…

”Whining, Blue Smoke & the Mechanics of Getting Unstuck” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Back to GTD: Do a fast "mind-sweep"

Merlin Mann — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:28:57 -0400

This post is part of the periodic “Back to GTD” series, designed to help you improve your implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

Whether you learned GTD from the book or heard it from The David himself (via one of his excellent seminars), you know that the vital first stage of Getting Things Done is Collection.

As laid out in Chapter 5:

Basically, everything is already being collected, in the larger sense. If it’s not being directly managed in a trusted external system of yours, then it’s resident somewhere in your psyche. The fact that you haven’t put an item in your in-basket doesn’t mean you haven’t got it. But we’re talking here about making sure that everything you need is collected somewhere other than in your head.

And, as David succinctly states elsewhere in the book, if you don’t use a dedicated inbox in the context of a healthy collection habit, your whole house or office turns into your inbox. And that just doesn’t scale. Failing to do so in recent weeks may be why you’ve fallen off the GTD wagon.

So, just as you learned Collection as the first step in implementing GTD (and to subsequently maintain your system), it’s precisely the place to start when you’re trying to properly get back into it.

And for the errant GTDer, I feel like the most powerful collection exercise is what DA calls “the mind-sweep.”

Why the Sweep?

The idea behind the mind-sweep is to identify and gather everything that is making claims on your attention or is likely to affect the larger areas of responsibility in your life — everything that’s quietly burning cycles, stealing focus, and whittling away at your attention — so that you can then decide what (if anything) must be done about each of those things.

By and large, you’ll discover, your head is flooded with this stuff that you aren’t or haven’t been doing anything about. Not coincidentally, this is almost always stuff that represents some kind of incompletion, functional fuzziness, or procrastination on your part. And as long as you let that stuff accumulate as chunky deposits on the edges of your perception, it’s very unlikely it’ll get done since — well — they won’t get done until they’re been captured and properly started, right?

I mean, you don’t sit around all day obsessing over chores and errands you finished two years ago, do you? No. Duh. They’re done. And that’s where you want to eventually re-locate all that you’re not doing now: “done.” That all starts with an exhaustive mind-sweep.

Get it on paper

As I tell my coaching peeps, anxiety unexpectedly becomes your best friend once you start to make a list, so try starting with a single sheet of printer paper and a pencil, set a timer for 10 minutes, and just begin scraping every conceivable anxiety and “open loop” from the corners of your brainpan.

Definitely begin with the hopelessly-behind project that’s making you insane right now (don’t front; you know that’s why you’re here), then proceed methodically (and eventually stream-of-consciousness-ly) through every flash of thought that makes you cringe, groan, pause, ponder, or exclaim; these are the runaway processes that are (at least partly) responsible for your brain’s current CPU issues. You need them out.

Work the anxiety

Remember, this is your big chance to reward that overly sensitive constitution of yours by converting the fuel for flopsweat into items that can later be made actionable (or deferred or delegated or killed etc). But you can’t do anything about it until it’s been captured and evaluated in some location that has better lighting than the inside of your pointy little head. So, be courageous, loosen your brain’s sphincter, and let ‘er rip.

It’s very useful here to employ the “Incompletion Triggers List” that David Allen provides in Getting Things Done (look in Chapter 5). If you can read phrases like “Cash flow,” “Upcoming Events: Birthdays,” and “Areas to Clean” and not feel some cringe of nagging incompletion — well, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Reading that list sends my own head into paroxysms.

Relentless, exhaustive, and focused

For the sweep to really do its best work, you must call upon extraordinary willpower to stay in collection mode. Remember the day you finally “got” how GTD worked by firewalling your planning time from your doing time? Same idea here. No straying.

Don’t go tearing ass toward beginning every task you capture the second it occurs to you. If you’re really behind in collection and suffer from distraction, I would (non-canonically) suggest even a sparing use of the two-minute rule. Don’t afford yourself opportunities to break concentration if you’re really on a roll. Staying focused on, as DA says, quantity of items captured is paramount. Be slavish about constantly returning to capture and follow every mental rabbit hole as far as it goes. Relief is at the other end.

Remember, your brain is smarter than you, and it can’t be tricked into thinking that things are taken care of when they actually aren’t. It’s kind of a dick like that.

So, if the ten minute timer dings, and you’ve still got stuff on your mind, just keep on plowing away. It might take ten minutes just for you to sufficiently loosen up, and it’s important that you gather as much as you can — particularly if it’s been a while since you’ve done this.

So, now what?

Well, if you’ve read GTD, you know what to do next; you process.

But, for the purposes of seeing this particular collection strictly in terms of getting back into GTD, I’d suggest also asking yourself a few questions as you read through your list:

Are there items on this list I now realize might have been aggravating my recent GTD slack?
Did anxiety or a feeling of being overwhelmed contribute to avoiding proper planning and execution of these items?
Might there be holes in my system that have made it easy for some of these items to escape and resist subsequent capture?
Has my work, home life, or general focus changed in subtle ways that might make me want to rethink best use of my planning time?
Are there interesting clusters within these projects that suggest opportunities and imminent change?
What sorts of tasks and projects are causing the biggest pain for me now? And how can I evolve a system that helps to compensate for that?

See if you aren’t feeling a little better about getting back into things. Do you need more collection or can you proceed to processing? Cool. Onward!

Better collection habits

Remember, now, this doesn’t all just happen once; ubiquitous capture is a process that means staying mindful, always having the collection tools you need nearby, and then using them. No, it doesn’t have to be a Hipster PDA — it could be a Treo, a whiteboard, or the side of your freshly shorn cat. The point is, capture the first time you think of it and you can rededicate that mental processing cycle to more interesting creative work.

Have you had good luck using Collection and mind-sweeps to get back into Getting Things Done? Got an inspiring tip to help other folks get back in the swing via smart Collection?

”Back to GTD: Do a fast "mind-sweep"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 24, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Catching the brain rain

Merlin Mann — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 08:38:25 -0400

Warm, Partly Cloudy, 100% Chance of Brain Rain

I like James’ ideas for catching the “brain rain” — a way of setting aside a few minutes each day for firewalled creativity through idea generation and capture. This kind of habit could fit nicely into an end-of-day ritual, maybe before a quick review and daily cleanup.

Keys to catching the brain rain:

set aside 10 minutes, each and every day

have pen and paper handy

allow yourself the freedom to think crazy thoughts

don’t worry if nothing really productive springs to mind right away

periodically scan over your notes from these sessions as things may pop into your mind after they have “marinated” for a while

if no ideas pop into your head pick a fun topic and doodle a bit

use word association to get things rolling if you feel stuck e.g. thinking -> thoughts -> mind -> brainstorm -> brain rain

”Catching the brain rain” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 20, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Solve problems by writing a note to yourself

Merlin Mann — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:31:05 -0500

Dear, Merlin,

For someone so fond of lecturing other people about their problems, I have a lot of annoying tics (I mean, duh). One of my worst, at least back in the day, was seldom bothering to RTFM before demanding lots of time-consuming help from others.

For years, my court of first resort was almost always to email the smartest, often busiest person I knew about a given topic, alerting them as to their new role as the speed bump between me and solving my problem (cf: the classic Balloon joke). I’ve gotten better at it over the years, for sure, and, in the age of Google, it’s a habit that’s easy enough to shed.

The funny thing I eventually realized was that I could and often did find the solution to my problem — part way through writing the email in which I was asking for help. I realize this sounds kind of silly, but the next time you’re having trouble figuring something out, try writing a note to yourself.

Seriously, open up your email program, type in your own email address, then choose a brilliant subject line that perfectly encapsulates your particular problem.

In the body of the message, start by typing a 2-3 sentence paragraph summarizing the trouble you’re having, with a focus not on your frustration or your dramatic need for immediate help — instead concentrate on coolly describing exactly what you want to accomplish as well as what happens when you try the approach that hasn’t been working for you. Remember: you’re theoretically writing this to the smartest, busiest person you know, so don’t waste their time with theatrics, melodrama, and passive-aggression; just give them accurate information that describes where you’re getting hung up.

Next, explain the ways you’ve already tried to solve this problem, including any alternate solutions, workarounds, hacks, reboots, etc. Anything that will help this very smart friend rule out possible causes is useful. And don’t be reluctant to use Google as you go; fact-checking yourself, choosing precise language, and ensuring that you’ve framed the right problem.

If you’re still typing at this point (meaning you haven’t stumbled upon 1 or 2 new solutions to try), outline 3-5 possible causes for the problem. Bullet out any recent changes, new software, theoretically related problems — anything that you think might be contributing to the primary hang-up.

Now go back and read your email like you’re the smartest, busiest person you know — like it’s not actually your problem. What’s missing? What would you suggest they try first? Is it plugged in?

In an astonishing number of cases — and at practically any point in this process — one or several things are likely to occur to you:

You’re overlooking something fundamental.
There’s an insanely obvious solution you hadn’t thought of.
You forgot about a configuration change.
You missed a dependency.
You’re using an excellent solution…for the wrong problem.
You were getting so worked-up and clicking so many things that you were actually making a trivial problem much worse.
You, um, hadn’t Googled for the Subject line of your message (or your error message, etc.).
You got so emotionally invested in solving the wrong problem that you didn’t realize there’s a simpler way to do what you ultimately need.
You don’t really need to be doing this at all.
It’s actually not plugged in.

This most definitely will not work for 100% of your problems, but you may be surprised at how well it works for most of them.

Alan Watts once wrote that once we understand a problem we’ve actually solved it — that you make a dark room brighter by adding light, not by waving your arms around. Next time you’re waving your arms around in the dark, make sure you understand the real nature of your problem — and not just allow yourself to pout and stay fixated on the desire for your frustration to go away. You probably already know the answer to your problem or you at least know where to find it. Maybe you just don’t know you know it yet.

Love,
Merlin

p.s.

Has anyone ever figured out that 90% of the posts on this site are actually (notes|pep talks|reminders) to myself? I sometimes think not. The site definitely makes more sense once you get this.

”Solve problems by writing a note to yourself” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 02, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Unpacking the anxieties on your TODO list

Merlin Mann — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:47:54 -0400

Writer’s Block, Geek-Block, and Procrastination

I like this practical, tactical approach to “cringe-busting” a list of tasks that you’ve been procrastinating. Basically, you write down each thing you want to do as well as the anxiety that’s kept you from doing it.

In the action column you can write big goals or tiny little tasks. Your aim is to end up with at least one task small enough that you can get on with it.

In the anxiety column you can write big over-riding fears, or small concerns, problems, worries. Your aim is to get down to at least one problem that is small enough to be solved.

Both Actions and Anxieties are fractal in nature, recursively-composed of smaller and smaller versions of themselves. Identifying the components is the true battle for the mind-locked geek.

Seems like this exercise (especially when extended with something like “The Five Whys”) could be a great way to smack yourself out of a slump, as well as gain a little insight into the greatest hits of your particular hang-up jukebox.

Technorati Tags: anxiety, lists, procrastination, productivity, tips

”Unpacking the anxieties on your TODO list” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on June 28, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Cringe-Busting your TODO list

Merlin Mann — Mon, 23 May 2005 08:58:01 -0400

As I’ve said before, items can sometimes linger on your TODO list a lot longer than you’d like, and it can be tricky to understand exactly why that is in each case. I’m convinced cringing is often a factor.

Being that it’s Monday, and a lot of us are planning this week’s activities, why not join me in a modest exercise.

Print out your TODO list (alphabetically, if possible)
Read it over—beginning to end
Go back and circle each item that makes you cringe, or that causes you some kind of existential angst
Per cringe item, think honestly about why you’re freaked out about it. Seriously. What’s the hang-up? (Fear of failure? Dreading bad news? Angry you’re already way overdue?)
Now, again, per cringe item, add a new TODO that will a) make the loathsome task less cringe-worthy, or b) just get the damned thing done
Cross the original cringe items off your list
Work immediately on the new, cringe-busting TODO

If you could do this for just one item on your TODO list today, wouldn’t you be a little better off? Is there a quick call you could make, a draft you could edit, an email you could return, or some other piddling 2-minute task that would plane some cringe off of your hated tasks?

Imagine if you did this today for five items on your list. Now imagine you began each Monday with a Cringe Bust. Might be a handy way to pick off old items and let some unnecessary anxiety out of your working week.

(For extra credit, find the item on your list that’s been making you cringe for the longest. Anybody else turning up items that have been inducing cringes for over a month? Ouch. I suck.)

”Cringe-Busting your TODO list” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 23, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Converting 'waiting on' items

Merlin Mann — Mon, 16 May 2005 10:23:39 -0400

I’m curious about how GTD fans handle their “waiting on” items. I’ve decided to try something a bit different in my own setup, and I’m wondering if others have done something similar with any success.

Currently, I have an Entourage category called “waiting on” that I assign to any item for which I’m anticipating a response from someone. This might be an email I need answered, login info for a website, an answer to a contract question, or what have you. As I’ve said elsewhere, this is when an item is “likely to require action when its sender gets back to you.” It’s also where I tend to put stuff that I’m keeping an eye on, although more and more, I’m inclined to move long-term non-actions to my “maybe later” list.

Anyhow, something bugs me about a separate “waiting on” list. As I’ve hinted before, it feels slack to me to have a passive list of things that I regard as other peoples’ responsibility. I’ve enjoyed having a separate “waiting on” category because it has made it easier to filter out “next actions” views in Entourage, but, when I think about it, it feels especially slack to let myself keep these items out of my view—like it’s really not my problem.

So, I’ve decided to experiment with blending all my “waiting on” items into my “next actions” list, but with a twist; each item has been given a due date and a reminder that reflects the date by which I need some movement from the other person. (Obviously, this could also be done with your tickler file, which probably makes more sense.)

For example, “get draft from Jim” has become “Email Jim for progress on draft” and it’s dated for next Wednesday. I can still forget about it in the short-term, but now there’s a useful landmine there to ping me. And, if Jim gets on the stick and sends me the draft before then? I can just delete the reminder—now or whenever it pops up.

As I spend more time with Getting Things Done, I try to simplify wherever I can. Where I once generated dozens of different lists, I now try keep everything in just a few places (thanks, Spotlight!).

So, has anyone else made a move like this? Consolidated your non-action stuff into more concrete actions of your own? Got any good tips or ideas to share?

”Converting 'waiting on' items” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 16, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Patching your personal suck

Merlin Mann — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:56:25 -0500

50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work is a terrifically useful and very entertaining list of hacks, tricks, ciphers, and fake rules for helping yourself write. Or more specifically, it helps you get unstuck, unblocked, and out of that hated procrastinating mire. It’s actually a much better version of my “Hack Your Way out of Writer’s Block” that I somehow missed in putting my ideas together.

I have to say, I’m really pleased to have discovered this article today, because it comports with some stuff I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and with the approach that sums up my feeling about “43 Folders-esque” ideas: in order to find what works for you, it helps to understand why the old stuff doesn’t.

By now, everybody knows that I swiped the basic idea for 43 Folders from my pal, hero, and personal muse, Danny O’Brien. His work on the original Life Hacks presentation was centered around research into why some people, especially those overachieving alpha geeks, seem to get so much more accomplished over the same 24 hours we mortals start with each day. Some of them, like Rael, just seem preternaturally organized and focused. Others, like Cory, are blessed with an ungodly gift for effective multi-tasking.

But many of the other productive nerds, as you soon realize, have just gotten really good at identifying their weaknesses and developing the compensatory psychic muscle needed to shore up their vulnerabilities. Forgetful? Write stuff down. Easily distracted? Set timers. Saddled with pointless interruptions? Leave the office. Find the bad code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the fastest, easiest, most elegant solution that could possibly work. Can it really be that simple?

Sure, to a careless viewer, it’s all “no duh” stuff, right? I mean, why would anyone need to be reminded that you can write things down on cards and then keep them organized? Well…to be honest? A lot of us need a surprising amount of reminding. Seriously.

Why do some people find it easy to stay skinny? How come some people can draw anything they see? Why is another naturally a whiz at math? How can one person be so much more effortlessly funny than another? Ask these questions to the people with the skillz and you’ll probably rack up the same answer every time: “I don’t know; it’s just how I am.” And so the rest of us portly, uncreative, arithmetically-retarded, not-funny people stare and stew like the loser in the Charles Atlas ad. “Why can’t I have that come to me so effortlessly?”

Because, you know: you can’t just turn it on and instantly be the thing you wish you were. It takes reflection, thought, iteration, and a personal commitment to facing the stuff at which you suck. And we all suck at something. You totally suck at something, and it secretly drives you nuts every goddamned day.

So, meanwhile, back at this article. I love that the application of two completely opposite ideas can have the same net effect on a problem.

Outline. Plan everything you’re going to write, scene by scene, all the way through to the end. Do your research while you’re outlining, so by the time you start writing the actual story, you’re already living in that world. With a detailed enough outline, the actual writing becomes a matter of choosing the right words to describe what you’ve already decided to tell. You can concentrate on style and let the plot take care of itself, because you’ve already done that part

Don’t outline. Don’t plan ahead at all. Feel the lure of the blank page. Trust your instincts and dive into the story, and don’t look back until you’re done.

The point is not that one is “right” and the other is “stupid”—what could be more facile? It’s about understanding what’s really important in helping a given person solve a given problem. Your brain and its behavioral artifacts aren’t some birdhouse you can nail together from a page of plans. You’re constantly thinking, obsessing, and evolving as you pinball through your day. There’s no single path, and, dimes to donuts, you’ll eventually end up losing it if you try to find just one.

I guess I’m saying I love the idea that once you’ve started admitting your “personal suck,” you can sample from an endless menu of tricks that may or may not help you improve things in your life. As long as you don’t lose an eye and can still get your work mostly done on time, where’s the damage in experimenting? Try something, then try the opposite. Then try the orthogonal. Every patch that fails teaches you a little something that might come in handy some day. Mistakes, as they say, can be a buddhist gift.

The only damage you’ll find harder to fix comes from the doors you’ve chosen to close forever. The creative mind and the productive actor are both ductile and open to new possibilities. Try patching your personal suck with crazy, ridiculous, incredibly obvious solutions. You’ve learned where your problems are; somewhere, you probably have a pretty good idea where the solutions are hiding, too.

”Patching your personal suck” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 15, 2005. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Hack Yourself: Exorcise the Demon

Merlin Mann — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:00:10 -0500

“Hack Yourself” is a short essay packed with inspiring thoughts on change, self-image, and the ranges of possibility that you permit yourself. Too many great bits to quote ‘em all, but I found this part especially illuminating:

Find the demon.

Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s the little voice in the back of your head that’s always whispering, “You can’t.” You know the demon. You may think you hate the demon, but you don’t. You love it. You let it own you. You do everything it says. Everytime there’s something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can’t have that.”

What you don’t realize is that your demon doesn’t know anything. It’s an idiot. It’s nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it’s ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You’ll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn’t know what it’s saying. It doesn’t care.

Exorcise yourself.

”Hack Yourself: Exorcise the Demon” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 20, 2004. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Hack your way out of writer's block

Merlin Mann — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:36:49 -0500

I recently had occasion to do some…errr…research on writer’s block. Yeah, research. That’s what I was doing. Like a scientist.

I found lots of great ideas to get unstuck and wrote the best ones on index cards to create an Oblique Strategies-like deck. Swipe, share, and add you own in comments.

Talk to a monkey - Explain what you’re really trying to say to a stuffed animal or cardboard cutout.
Do something important that’s very easy - Is there a small part of your project you could finish quickly that would move things forward?
Try freewriting - Sit down and write anything for an arbitrary period of time—say, 10 minutes to start. Don’t stop, no matter what. Cover the monitor with a manila folder if you have to. Keep writing, even if you know what you’re typing is gibberish, full of misspellings, and grammatically psychopathic. Get your hand moving and your brain will think it’s writing. Which it is. See?
Take a walk - Get out of your writing brain for 10 minutes. Think about bunnies. Breathe.
Take a shower; change clothes - Give yourself a truly clean start.
Write from a persona - Lend your voice to a writing personality who isn’t you. Doesn’t have to be a pirate or anything—just try seeing your topic from someone else’s perspective, style, and interest.
Get away from the computer; Write someplace new - If you’ve been staring at the screen and nothing is happening, walk away. Shut down the computer. Take one pen and one notebook, and go somewhere new.
Quit beating yourself up - You can’t create when you feel ass-whipped. Stop visualizing catastrophes, and focus on positive outcomes.
Stretch - Maybe try vacuuming your lungs too.
Add one ritual behavior - Get a glass of water exactly every 20 minutes. Do pushups. Eat a Tootsie Roll every paragraph. Add physical structure.
Listen to new music - Try something instrumental and rhythmic that you’ve never heard before. Put it on repeat, then stop fiddling with iTunes until your draft is done.
Write crap - Accept that your first draft will suck, and just go with it. Finish something.
Unplug the router - Metafilter and Boing Boing aren’t helping you right now. Turn off the Interweb and close every application you don’t need. Consider creating a new user account on your computer with none of your familiar apps or configurations.
Write the middle - Stop whining over a perfect lead, and write the next part or the part after that. Write your favorite part. Write the cover letter or email you’ll send when it’s done.
Do one chore - Sweep the floor or take out the recycling. Try something lightly physical to remind you that you know how to do things.
Make a pointless rule - You can’t end sentences with words that begin with a vowel. Or you can’t have more than one word over eight letters in any paragraph. Limits create focus and change your perspective.
Work on the title - Quickly make up five distinctly different titles. Meditate on them. What bugs you about the one you like least?
Write five words - Literally. Put five completley random words on a piece of paper. Write five more words. Try a sentence. Could be about anything. A block ends when you start making words on a page.

On the other hand, remember Laurence Olivier.

One day on the set of Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman showed up looking like shit. Totally exhausted and practically delirious. Asked what the problem was, Hoffman said that at this point in the movie, his character will have been awake for 24 hours, so he wanted to make sure that he had been too. Laurence Olivier shook his head and said, “Oh, Dusty, why don’t you just try acting?”

So, when all else fails, just try writing.

”Hack your way out of writer's block” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 18, 2004. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"