Overcoming the Creative Roadblocks
In recent years, the non-fiction aisle has been flooded with books promising to unlock greater productivity, efficiency, and mastery over your time. The message is clear: we’re obsessed with doing more, better, and in less time. Yet, modern work often feels like an endless juggling act. Remote meetings blend into Slack conversations, toggling between twenty open browser tabs, replying to emails while searching for attachments that seem to have vanished into the ether. Amidst all this chaos, we schedule carpools, pay bills, and handle life’s demands.
We know context switching is a productivity killer, yet most of us do it all day, every day. Is there a better way? Can we allow ourselves to focus on just one task at a time?
The Mental Overload of Modern Life
Did you know we have up to 60,000 thoughts per day? Astonishingly, 95% of them are repeats from the day before, and up to 80% can be negative. The mental chatter is relentless:
• “I don’t want to sit through this boring meeting.”
• “Why can’t I remember my password?”
• “What’s wrong with me? I’ll never finish this project.”
It’s no surprise we feel drained. Research suggests that multitasking can double the time it takes to finish a task and increase error rates by up to 50%. Yet we still do it. Why? Often, it’s a form of procrastination.
The Procrastination Trap
When faced with a big, daunting task, we tend to start with smaller, less important ones. The logic? Crossing a few things off our to-do list will give us the momentum to tackle the big one. But those smaller tasks often snowball, leaving the real priorities untouched.
Strangely, the tasks we procrastinate on are often the ones we care about the most. They’re the big-ticket items:
• “Finish novel.”
• “Record podcast.”
• “Launch business idea.”
Why do these tasks linger on our to-do lists, haunting us year after year? The fear of failure, inadequacy, or unmet expectations often paralyzes us. We avoid starting because starting means committing.
Decision Paralysis: The Creative Killer
At the heart of procrastination lies decision paralysis—the overwhelming anxiety of choosing a path when the outcome is uncertain. Creative work, in particular, requires countless micro-decisions, each one stacking atop the last. It’s exhausting, especially when you don’t have all the information or can’t see the full picture.
In the past week alone, I’ve felt this paralysis:
• Trying to design the weapons and landscape for a futuristic battle scene.
• Deciding on a side character’s name and backstory.
• Figuring out how to cancel a mysterious streaming subscription no one in my family seems to use.
• Connecting a Roland synthesizer to my computer.
Each of these required more steps than anticipated. What I thought would take two steps ballooned into five—or seven. Frustration mounted, inertia set in, and progress ground to a halt.
Overcoming the Roadblocks
The solution is both simple and maddeningly slow: focus on one task at a time.
• Commit fully to solving one problem.
• Resist the urge to think about what else you “should” be doing.
• Accept that progress will take time and energy.
It’s not glamorous, but it works. The real win is learning to celebrate the small victories along the way. Solving a major roadblock—whether it’s figuring out a plot point, finishing a sketch, or debugging code—is just as important as crossing the finish line.
Step-by-Step, Detail by Detail
Creative work isn’t about monumental leaps forward; it’s about methodically tackling each step, each detail. The key is to fight the temptation to judge yourself for “not making progress” and instead focus on what’s in front of you.
This is advice I need as much as anyone else. Finishing creative projects always takes more time, energy, and mental effort than expected. But every step forward—no matter how small—is still progress.
So, to anyone feeling stuck on a creative project this week: hang in there. Celebrate your wins, however minor they seem, and trust that every detail you solve brings you closer to the finish line.
You’ve got this.