Collective Genius!

Thoughts from the fly paper

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I've been intently sitting and reading what everyone has to say on the topic of getting unstuck because I'm am currently stuck. The ditch is muddy and all I do is spin my wheels. My stuck isn't the small kind of stuck.  I've got things to do,  and my day job goes fairly well ( notice "fairly" ).  My stuck is a global stuck; a big picture stuck; a no-master-plan-and-no-vision-or-end-game kind of stuck.  I'm starting to go a little crazy from it.

My hopes of writing this is to maybe come up with a game plan, or some new ways of looking at the problem.  I've jotted down some ideas,  maybe something will stick.

Chaos

A little chaos is a great thing.  and chaos theory is even better.  In an extremely simplified version of the theory,  every option is whittled down to the smallest of choice: yes or no, left or right, up or down. And chaos is derived from the randomness in these answers.  So,  I try to ask myself the simplest of questions that only result in "yes" or "no".  Unlike leadership,  these questions aren't intended to tickle to new discussions.  After-all,  when your stuck,  perhaps new questions and thoughts isn't what is needed.  For me,  a "yes" or "no" on these day will suffice. No "why" or "where do I see myself in 5 years", the questions I focus on is "Do I check my email now?", "Can I read that quality report now?", etc..  These questions don't have to be just from you.  Others around can be involved: "Nick,  do you want to go to the mall for lunch?".  Sometimes,  just for fun, I wake and tell myself that I will always answer "yes" today, no matter what ( note: this can send you on an interesting adventure. Be Prepared )

Ebb and Flow

Like others have noted, perhaps you aren't actually stuck. Life has an ebb and flow that is like wind or water - outside forces acting on you and your life.  It happens. If you aren't stuck then what are you doing?  Well,  one of 2 things: resting or balancing.

Resting - We all need a break,  and sometimes a good nap.  These moments is our minds way of saying "whoa". 

Balancing - It could be that the amount of effort or the work being done is equal.  If you see a bird stationary in the sky - it is moving forward,  you just can't see it.  To really notice,  we need to change our perspective.

Perspective

Accomplishment and movement is in the eye of the beholder.  If you are walking in the prairies,  sometimes It might not seem like you're walking at all.  You need to change your markers for progress.  Perhaps you simply count steps.  But if you forget,  then it might seem like you haven't gone anywhere and are "stuck".  Another example is if you are swimming in a river against the flow.  The scenery hasn't changed,  but your swimming like mad.  How long have you been swimming?

I have a issues with this all the time.  I'm a big thinker.  I sometimes have difficulties watching and noticing the smaller hurtles.  I don't see all the little steps I do.  For me I want to see the whole website, so when I complete a module,  all I see is an incomplete site,  not a completed module. Perhaps I'm not the only one.  Maybe if you're stuck,  or think you're stuck, perhaps if you look closer,  you are a champion that is jumping hurtles all the time. 

"Not" Accomplishments

I'm thinking this is my current situation.  In all my work for career development I'm am finding all the "not"s - what I'm not going to do,  and what aren't priorities.  I've taken off a lot of the goals based on my personal revelations.  However,  we can hit patches,  and this might feel like failure. It's a part of the scientific process. All experiments go through this process.  Inventors learn soon,  that every time you try,  you are learning what "not" to do.  It's like carving or sculpting,  the shavings discarded,  will ultimately leave you with what you do what.  The challenge is celebrating and recognizing.

In the end did I answer my question?  Maybe.  Am I still stuck? Maybe not as stuck as I thought.

Still Looking,
Nick Kempinski

unstuck = happiness

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There's a lot of irony to this. I'm sitting here typing up this post instead of doing the thing I'm stuck on. I've got to make new labels for my tea tins. I've had it on my to-do list for over a week and a half now. I've done everything but. The good news? I've got a ton of other things I've been putting off done. The labels weren't exactly high priority, and I will get them done tonight or tomorrow. Avoiding them has gotten me to cross off over 30 things on my to-do list.

I've been stuck for a while on my business. I love what I do, I have a passion for it that sometimes stuns me. But sometimes getting up and doing the work is a struggle. I had my reasons, a long list of them: we were still settling in, it was still summer, my health was still sketchy, I was busy with other things, my husband was already complaining about my lack of free time, etc. I was stuck and I was finding excuses to stay that way.

Mainly because I was comfortable. Comfortable is easy. Comfortable is reliable. Comfortable is safe. Comfortable is also boring, unchallenging and stuck.

I'm a strong believer that the place to be is just outside your own comfort zone; always pushing, trying, daring, risking.

And yet, I wasn't doing it. I was sitting safely still. I was scared.

One day I looked at my friend who was telling me about his plans for September to try and pull himself out of the rut he'd found himself in and realized, "me too." So I decided to buckle down too. September was a total refocus: on my business, on my future plans, on this thing that makes me feel like I'm making the world a better place.

I just forced myself to sit down and do the work. I talked about it to everyone who would sit still long enough. I babbled business ideas to friends. I handed out at least a couple business cards a day. I started pushing advertising on-line. I sent out samples. I looked myself in the mirror in the morning and said, "I am not 'comfortable.' I am working. My business is succeeding. I am doing this."

You know what happened? I got three orders in the first week. I connected with a dozen potential clients. I started a new play. I made up at least a dozen new words. I gave a handful of massages. My brain runs at full-tilt and my notepad has new scribbles every day.

September first, I decided to stop waiting for the time to be right. I stopped thinking that my business would just sell itself. I just took the first tentative steps of forcing the work, pushing the muse and making it happen. And it has.

What I know is that we have a choice. We can let life sweep us along, or we can make our own path. The path I want to create for my life means a lot of hard work and boring paperwork and hours of rubbing other peoples backs. I haven't been happy the past year or so where I wasn't really able to focus on my business, on my dream, because of so many other things. Something I need is a long to-do list, a busy calendar, and a big healthy challenge.

And now? Now that I'm working a dozen hours a day, and being told to occasionally sit still and stop working? Now that I forced myself slowly, and, at times, painfully away from where I was stuck?

I'm happy.

Oh, yeah, I'm still a bit scared. Busting my butt for 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week... what if it doesn't work out? Yeah, it's scary. The good news is I'm too busy to worry about that. I've got these labels to worry about, and samples to send out, and gift baskets to make up, and clients to schedule for massages. Somewhere inside I'm sure I'm still scared, still nervous. I don't really have time to talk about it though - you see I'm too busy.

Busy and deliriously happy.

What aren't you doing that will make you happy?

Autumn

Cutting Things Down To Size

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The hardest part of getting unstuck is noticing that you were stuck in the first place.  I've just spent all afternoon stuck on doing my company accounts, only I didn't notice.  I checked my email.  Caught up with a friend or two via instant messenger.  Made, and drank, a few cups of tea.  Posted a new entry to my blog  Sent a few emails that were overdue.  And filled in half-a-dozen lines of an expenses spreadsheet.

Now some of those things were tasks on my to-do list, so I don't feel too bad that I've completed them as part of my procrastination (using hard tasks as a tool to combat procrastination of slightly-less tasks is a whole other post...); but the expenses form is the only thing that's taken my accounts task any further.

It's not like doing the accounts is going to be that onerous a task - it's probably not more than a couple of hours of work.  It's just that I don't do it often, so always have to re-acquaint myself with the accounts software, and there's a couple of things that I haven't entered before which will take a little bit of thinking about to get right.

Whatever the reason was, I was stuck.  And I hadn't noticed.

Divide and Conquer

It was only after I'd had a break for an hour or so to get some dinner, and my brain had the time to mull things over, that I realised.  I was talking to my girlfriend about my day, and explaining what doing my accounts would entail when it hit me.

I'd been stuck, but I knew how to fix things.

Divide and conquer.  It's my favourite tool for getting unstuck.  Take whatever it is that you're trying to do, and break it into smaller tasks.  Repeat as necessary until you have something manageable, then do the first one that needs to be done.

Even just breaking it down into smaller tasks feels like you've accomplished something towards your goal.  Plus smaller tasks are inherently easier to complete, and you get to multiply the satisfaction of crossing a task off your todo list by the new number of tasks!

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Adrian McEwen blogs over at McFilter, and his company has just launched tedium - a way to keep track of, and organize, all those things you have to do.

You Can't Make Me!

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Routine of any sort gets me stuck. I hate doing the same thing over and over. I like new things and I get bored really quickly. When that happens, I procrastinate. I download and watch whole seasons of TV shows. I read. I go visit people or I surf randomly on the web.

I've tried many ways to get myself unstuck, such as having a rotation of things that I can do or ways of doing things so that when I get bored of one approach, I use another. But that doesn't last much either.

Instead I just let the stuckness happen – I'll quickly get bored with it and will go back to being productive soon enough.

When I don't have time to let the procrastination happen, I talk sternly to myself, laughing at my own reticence. And then I just do it. I pick up the pen, call the client, clean the bathroom – whatever it is that I'm avoiding I just start doing it.

Once I've started, it's very easy to stop again at this point, so I just keep pushing through until either I've completed the task or I've started to enjoy the task again.

Of course, when I'm stuck, the main thing that keeps me stuck is guilt. I judge myself and when I do that the rebellious teenager appears and tells the judge to shut his yap and let me on with doing nothing. It's not that I want to rebel and deny – I just do it. Which is why when I just push myself through it, I end up enjoying myself and the rebellious teen retreats.

Alex Fayle
House Therapy
The Easy Life Evangelist

Unstuck in Stages

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I'll admit I don't get stuck often. But when I do.  .  .  well, it's Rube Goldberg meets Catch-22. I can't do This because of That. I can't do That because of This. And in between This and That, there are a whole lot of gyrations that lead nowhere useful and don't enhance the process --  twists and turns and ups and downs and around the bends -- the boot kicks the chicken which lays the egg into the frying pan heated by the toaster started by a glass on its lever being filled with orange juice . . . you get the picture. And yet, the gyrations and the catch seem as real and viable and impassable to me as true realities of my life. It's hard to tell the sticking points I've manufactured from the ones that are really there. I'm that good at it.

Getting stuck is easy. Getting unstuck is the hard part.

Most of the time when I'm stuck, it's time related. I can't do The Important Thing until something else has happened or a certain time has arrived. For example, I'd love to have a job where I travel constantly. That's right, no home address, just me and the Holiday Inns of the world. But I can't do that yet. I still have a son at home who needs me and needs our school district so, for the past 17 years, my feet have been superglued to suburbia.

In the earlier stuck-at-home years, I felt real frustration at not being able to go as I pleased. I could have grown resentful and bitter (why won't that darn kid just grow up faster?), but instead, I took a good look at what I would need to do, to have in place, so that when the time came, I was ready. I could grease the skids to make things move not faster, but smoother. Making plans for the future kept me moving forward and not feeling so stuck at all.

And a funny thing happened along the way. I received an opportunity where I could be at home on the weeks my son is with me and work halfway across the country on the weeks he's with his Dad. I'm not completely untethered from my suburban post, but I'm not shackled to it either. And most of all, I don't think this opportunity would have presented itself if I had not spent so much of my stuck time preparing for to be unstuck some day.

I've got less than 2 years to go before I am completely free to be responsible only for myself. A major part of me is looking forward to being completely unstuck. But part of me is grateful for the stuck days I've had. I don't regret any of the time I've spent dreaming and planning for the future. It's given me time to really figure out what I want, what's important, what's not, what I must have, what I can do without. In all these years in the suburbs, I've learned to make the most of life's adhesive, to enjoy This while I plan for That, and to enjoy That because I always get to come home to This, my truly Important Thing.

Gretchen Stahlman: The Year in Red

Stick to your guns

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Writing this post has taken longer than I had planned. You see, I was on a roll. The words were flowing. The mood was glowing. The fan was blowing. And then I ran out of rhyming words. I was stuck.

Hmmm, stuck.

Stuck on you, stick in the mud, stick to it, this is a stick-up, sticks and stones, carry a big stick, sticky situation, stick together, stick it where the sun don’t shine, and who can forget the musical groups Styx. (Feel free to comment and add your own).

Ooops! Sorry. I got a little sidetracked there. But I guess this helps me make my point.

Everyone is different. Some folks have many projects going on at once so they can switch between them. Others follow that KFC commercial from years ago by doing one thing and doing one thing right. And as the above rambling points out, maybe just a change of thought or a break is all it may take to get us out of a given rut.

For me, it’s a bit of a merger between them all. I like being able to see various things or avenues I could be working on in order to get from here to wherever there is. But sometimes it becomes a distraction. With so many things calling for my attention, how is an indecisive Gemini like me supposed to pick what to focus on?

In the end, my way of getting unstuck has always been to get back to what got me started in this direction in the first place. For one reason or other, writing (despite really not liking English classes in school), has been what has kept me moving forward even when I could have sworn I was doing nothing but spinning my wheels.

I’ve got a question…

What works for you?  Do you go back to that one thing you started doing way back when (the thing you enjoyed so much you couldn’t stop doing it)?  Do you prefer bouncing from one activity to another? Or do you like to take a break by going to the neighborhood park and counting the rabbits and squirrels you may find in order to find out what your next steps should be?

David Stoddard
The Unmotivated Motivational Writer

Cycles of getting unstuck

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I could sit here and talk about becoming unstuck in the big picture of your life, but I'd feel a bit hypocritical since I'm currently stuck. Really, the big picture for me feels like a road coated in rubber cement. I move forward a little bit, get stuck for a while, manage to free my feet enough to move a few more feet forward, get stuck again. It's been an odd cycle.

On a day to day level, it's more a struggle with motivation and feeling lost than a fight with that rubber cement road. One argues that you can't move forward without a clear goal in mind, but I'm currently of the belief that naming a goal blinds you to potential opportunities that you should be following. This isn't to say I don't have smaller goals I'm constantly working toward. There just isn't an arrival point for my journey yet.

I think somewhere in that last paragraph is the real reason I'm feeling so stuck, so lost.

The day to day feelings of stuck are a bit easier for me to get around. When my motivation flags, when I just don't want to do anything anymore, I consider one of a handful of techniques to get myself moving again.

• I create an impossibly long to-do list, and then give myself one day to get it done.
• I take my normal to-do list and plan out the order tasks will be accomplished so that I end up bouncing between activities. The feeling of being ungrounded and disconnected forces me to straighten up and force myself forward out of the rut.
• I erase my to-do list and instead work toward a list of accomplishments. (It's amazing how a blank whiteboard can be just as motivating as an overwhelmingly long to-do list.)
• I put on music and dance or sing
• I light a scented candle (I was bouncing between vanilla and sandalwood for a while, but now I'm a die-hard jasmine or tangerine girl when it comes to pushing myself out of a rut.)
• I throw in a movie and let it serve as background noise while I force myself out of my rut (So far, my favorites for actually getting anything done are the first two Lord of the Rings movies. The music is subtle. but driving and it's nice to sit and stare at New Zealand when I need a break.)
• On very rare occasions, I give myself permission to completely ignore my to-do list and just play games online.

I feel like I spend more time stuck than unstuck these days, and I know a lot of that has to do with feeling generally stuck in my life. Working through the daily feeling of stuck makes it all bearable, though, becasue it feels like I'm one step closer to wherever it is that will make me feel unstuck and moving forward gracefully again.

Rebecca Thomas

Do you really want your goal?

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Being stuck is a bad feeling. I have known it a lot, and I am sure so have you. Naturally in this situation we want to get un-stuck.

What is "being stuck?"

In most definitions - mine included - it is a series of seemingly un conquerable obstacles on the path to achieving a goal. Being stuck is when these roadblocks seem to pile up and intensify the harder you push.

On any path there are obstacles, but when you are stuck they seem to grow with the energy you put into overcoming them.

I recently had a very clarifying experience in this regard. I was planning on having a dog and was researching all the things that need to happen to make that idea come true. Obviously there are a number of obstacles and hard parts about such a move. Things that that speak against taking on such a reponsibility, the financials involved, the "freedom" you loose in travel. In whole the dog just didn't happen. There was no single reason why it should not have worked out. Thinking about all those things logically none of them was a dealstopper. Going about it in a pro/con fashion didn't get me anywhere.

So at one point I simply decidedf it would be the right thing to go ahead. Everybody around me also thought it was a good idea.

Still, the cons seemed to overwhelm me in their totality. Everything was set to go, but still it didn't happen. There was always something.

Being totally frustrated with myself I went a number of steps back to the very basic question of "do I want a dog now?"

I employed muscle testing as a method to get a deeply felt answer. In that way I circumvented the logical mind. It was in a never ending logical spiral anyway and had proven to be of little use at this point.

Well guess what. The answer I got from myself was a simple "not yet."

From there out all the struggle started to make sense. Had I really wanted a dog, all those roadblocks would have been obstacles, challenges, but nothing more. But by not really wanting and supporting the idea in my core, they became dealstoppers.

And one more thing became clear to me: regardless of how many of the obstacles I would have conquered and overcome, I woould have met and found new ones just as fast as I could overcome them.

So here's a though for you when you are stuck: is the goal you are trying to achieve really something you want? And I am not talking about the "want" that you will express when asked in a conversation. I am talking about the want you feel deep in your core.

traumwind

Unsticking Yourself From Your Rut

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What a great topic. Like Scott, I too, remember being stuck. It was the early 90s, I was living outside of Philadelphia (which I loved), working a part time job at night, and runnning a small vending business at the same time. Divorced and barely paying my bills, things weren't so great. I wasn't what I'd call unhappy, but I was definitely stuck and recognized it. The unsettled feeling I had was myself becoming aware that I hadn't done anything to challenge myself in a long time and was in a rut. My life was ripe for  change.

Later that year, Philadelphia began getting ice storms. One after another they came, usually overnight, which meant that my normal routine of leaving the house at 6:00 a.m. to start my vending route became impossible many mornings. The roads were solid ice and completely impassable until about 10:00 a.m. and then at night they'd re-freeeze again. As the month wore on, the storms kept coming, at a rate of about two a week, building a thick layer of clear, beautiful ice on every surface. By the end of January, we had experienced our seventeenth ice storm of the winter and I was going broke. Then I had one of those "moments of clarity" that you hear about.

In an instant, the words, "I'm moving south" came into my head. I hadn't mulled it over, I hadn't considered it carefully, or even given it a passing thought before. It literally came out of nowhere as an "inspired thought", which The Secret refers to. I never questioned it, I just began planning my strategy and for the next twelve months, I worked my plan. I got out of debt, I sold off most of my stuff, I found living arrangements in Atlanta with the one person I knew there, and in February of the following year, debt-free, with a little cash in my bank account and no job to go to when I arrived, I loaded a U-Haul truck and moved south. This move began a whole new chapter in my life. I now know, from reading Jack Canfield's books listening to Earl Nightingale's The Strangest Secret, as well as The Secret, that I was indeed using The Secret back then, I just didn't realize it. I had an inspired thought, I acted on it, and the universe responded with exactly what I needed.

Within four months of moving to Atlanta, I met the man I would later marry. Within two years, I started the business that would become my career and help me discover my purpose. And in the past four years, I've become more self-aware and done more growing and improving than in the last fifteen years. It took a drastic physical change, followed by a mental change to get me unstuck, and it's one of the best things I ever did.

Monica Ricci
Your Life. Organized.

On getting unstuck

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I remember being stuck.

I was stressed.  I was frustrated.  And my company wasn’t making any money for the third year in a row.

Then I listened to Earl Nightingale’s The Strangest Secret before going to bed one night.

In his program, he advises you to take the one thing you want more than anything in the world and focus all of you efforts on attaining it.

For me, it was to move into a new house and reach my target income goal within a year. 

So, I took Earl’s advice.  I wrote down my goal on a little nametag and kept it in my wallet.  I looked at it several times a day.  I told everyone in my mastermind group about it.  My friends even bet me $20 that I would be able to accomplish it.

And on January 1st, I set out to achieve my goal by December 31st.

Miraculously, I hit that goal mid-July.

I became unstuck.

It was truly amazing. 

So, thanks to the prompt from Curt's Collective Genius Blog, here are my three cents on getting unstuck:

What gets people stuck: running in place and not doing anything about it.  Not setting goals.  Not focusing on “that one thing.”

Why people stay stuck: because they’re part of the 90% of the world who doesn’t a) set goals, b) write them down, and c) look at them daily.

How people can get unstuck:

1) Tell people who are important to you that you’re stuck. 
2) Walk with the wise.  Surround yourself with those who aren’t stuck. 
3) Watch the movie The Secret. 
4) Focus 100% of your efforts on your one big thing.
5) Put a sticky note on your computer that reminds you, “Is what you're doing RIGHT NOW consistent with your #1 goal?"

Good luck.  May the Schwartz be with you. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS...
How did you get unstuck?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS...
On a small card, write down the one thing you want more than anything, and the date by which you'd like to have it.  Look at it several times a day.  Commense getting unstuck.

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Scott Ginsberg
Author/Speaker/That Guy with the Nametag
www.hellomynameisscott.com