Why four solutions? Because writer’s block doesn’t have just one cause; otherwise there would be a one-size-fits-all cure. It’s a complex problem involving many factors.

It’s also a lonely sort of problem because others just don’t understand. You see people who are less motivated and less capable than you who have no trouble at all with it. On the other hand, you see people at your level or higher – scholars, etc. — who also have no problem with it!

So writer’s block is confusing because it’s hard to not think you’re just weird (and even a bad writer) when you sit there staring at a blank page doing nothing. Maybe you should give up?

No! The good news is that, according to studies I’ve read, the better a writer you are, the more likely you are to get writer’s block. The more you know about your subject, the tougher the time you’ll have on average.

Think about it… because you’re a good writer, you have high standards for your work. It takes an astonishing level of quality until you’re satisfied with your work. Not only that, but there’s also a ton of external pressure to produce high quality. If you’re writing a dissertation for a PhD, your graduate committee will constantly make complex demands that cause you to second-guess yourself. If you’re an author, you’re under massive pressure to produce perfection. And so on.

What I’m getting at is that writer’s block is caused by being focused on the outcome while you’re writing.

Think about when you’re talking to somebody. While you’re talking to them, is it good to over-analyze and think about what it will be like to look back on the conversation? Of course not. Instead it’s best to just allow the conversation to flow.

It should be the same thing with your writing, since writing is just one-on-one communication in print.

With that in mind, hang onto your seat because here is the cure for writer’s block:

1. Stop Fooling Yourself Into Thinking You’re Writing When You’re Really Not.

Most people think about writing as an entire process, where you take a walk and think, you drink a cup of coffee, you read a book to prepare for the writing, etc.

However, in reality you’re not writing when you do those other things. Taking a walk to think and clear your mind is not writing; you’re only writing when your fingers are tapping the keyboard or moving the pen.

You’re not writing when you’re doing research; you’re only writing when you’re actually in the act of producing words and sentences.

2. Figure Out What Your Interruptors Are and Quarantine Them.

Answer this question:

When I stopped writing, what activity did I then do?

Maybe you stopped writing to check email, telephone a friend, or to do yet more research. That is your Writing Interruptor, and you should quarantine it for later. Prevent yourself from checking email (or whatever) until you’re finished.

Try it and see how it works. Because let’s face it: your current system of stopping writing in order to do something else is not working.

By the way, it doesn’t matter how much research you do or how many breaks you take to refresh. Nothing will get your writing project done except putting words on paper.

But, you’re probably thinking, doesn’t doing a ton of research make the writing go easily?

The answer is no… in fact it is the opposite. The more research you do, the higher the standard you set for yourself, making it harder to actually write.

I’ve seen a lot of extremely bright graduate students fall into this trap, making projects like dissertations take literally years longer than they should have, simply because they over-prepared and learned too much before writing.

Never confuse preparation for writing with the writing itself, because the more you prepare to write, the tougher the writing becomes.

3. Stop Calling It “Writer’s Block”

Ever noticed how saying “I feel sad” makes you feel depressed? Or (in the case of this site) “I feel lazy” makes you feel lethargic? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Plus the label “writer’s block” makes the challenge sound impossible to overcome. After all, how can you do something if you’re blocked by some mysterious outside force?

So, rather than saying “I have writer’s block,” be more accurate and say, “I’m currently being too lazy to put words on paper.” That way it becomes a problem you can get past rather than an external obstacle.

4. Use A Model.

Pablo Picasso is famous for saying, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.” What he meant by that is you don’t need to invent the wheel. Instead you should model your work after something that’s already been done well.

So if you’re writing an article on on organic gardening tips, find similar articles and use them as a model. If you’re writing a dissertation, find other successful dissertations to use as ideal examples for you to follow. And so on.

Finally, was this post helpful to you? Please post a comment to let me know.

-John

my biggest problem is that when I’m waiting for my PC to do something (e.g. load a new web page - my work requires the use of the web), I’m tempted to visit a news page or a web forum, and then I can easily get involved in that (or leads that follow from that) for a long time (sometimes the “quick look” genuinely is quick if there’s nothing interesting there). So - when one is working quickly and enthusiastically, but a delay arises, how to avoid the temptation to “quickly” take a look at a web site? What to do instead?

You sound like me about a year ago.

News sites and forums are deadly to your productivity. Here’s the 5-part solution…

1. Realize the potential consequences of your behavior.

Have a look here at this from the Canadian government’s Adult Literacy Database:

Top 12 Reasons For Getting Fired

1. Little interest in getting work done. (Bad Attitude)
2. Too many days off work and late starts. (Bad Attitude)
3. Lack of loyalty. (Bad Attitude)
4. Being impolite to workmates. (Bad Attitude)
5. Lack of speed.
6. Not paying attention to detail. (Bad Attitude)
7. Not sticking with things until they are done. (Bad Attitude)
8. No interest or excitement. (Bad Attitude)
9. No pride in speech or appearance. (Bad Attitude)
10. Lack of responsibility. (Bad Attitude)
11. Lack of respect for authority. (Bad Attitude)
12. Lack of respect for the property of others.

Notice how #1, #5, #6, #7, and #8 are all related to laziness? If it sounds like you, your odds of success at work aren’t good.

If you can’t stay motivated about your job, you’re in trouble. I’ve met many successful people — self-made millionaires, winning athletes, and CEOs – and they all share a passion for what they do.

Like you, I also work with computers, and part of the benefits is that you can be relaxed in a comfy office (unlike people like auto mechanics and roofers who do “real” work for a living) — though the drawback is the temptation to goof off.

2. Think about the big picture.

Getting distracted happens when you think about the little picture instead. You get bogged down in the task you’re doing, and then you become bored… and then those message boards and news sites look awfully interesting.

The solution is to constantly take a step back and look at your overall goals. Your current task is just a small step on your way toward a million dollar portfolio, a career promotion, etc.

So remember to keep focused. The downtime when you’re waiting for your slow computer is the perfect moment to reflect on your goals.

3. Give Yourself More To Do.

A lot of times we get distracted because there simply isn’t enough for us to do. For example, think about what it’s like to be a college student. The semester starts, and there’s not that much work. You can hang out with friends and watch South Park on TV.

And then all of a sudden you’ve got 5 tests and 3 papers due the same week. It’s literally impossible to get distracted, because you’re frantically trying to catch up. Going to news sites and forums would be the last thing on your mind.

You get the work done because there’s no other choice. What that means is this: don’t be happy with doing the minimum. Accomplish your goals, then see what more you do. Don’t limit yourself.

4. Limit Yourself To Once Per Day.

One of the best things I ever did was to limit myself to checking news sites and message boards no more than once per day. News sites and forums are likely to have valuable new content once a day, but rarely 10 times a day. You can usually set aside 20-30 minutes a day and pick up everything you need from those sites. Checking them more than once a day adds little additional value, but subtracts significant value because it sucks up so much of your time.

When you place a strict limit like that, those sites aren’t as addictive any more.

5. Take A Productive Break.

I learned a breathing exercise from parenting expert Pam Van Zwoll that both soothes your stress and energizes you. It goes like this:

1. Breathe into your abdomen as much as you can. (You’ll know you’re doing it right when you see your belly rise; your chest should not inflate.)

2. Hold for a 3-count.

3. Exhale through your nose. (That ensures you’ll be slow when you breathe out.)

Bingo!–Now you feel both relaxed and energized.

Think about the time you spend throughout the day. When you’re certain that you’ve spent more productive time than surfing time, you’re on your way to success.

However, sometimes we have a mental block and still don’t do the thing we need to be doing.

To illustrate, let’s use cleaning your house. You know when you’ve got guests coming over and you want to make your place spotless for them? It’s a pretty universal example.

Rather than get your vacuum out and get moving, you watch TV, paint your nails if you’re a girl, or play video games if you’re a guy, and so on.

So at this point you need to ask yourself:

What feeling is making me stall? And what thoughts am I having that are making me feel that way?

Take 2 minutes right now and write down your answer.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, your answer will be some version of this:

“I’m not starting the task yet because I feel like I’ll go through pain if I do it now. I feel like that because I’m thinking about the drudgery of the task. And if I delay… maybe there will be some magical time in the future when I won’t go through that.”

And of course you know (since you’ve been reading this blog) that this is ridiculous. In the long run, doing the task will make you happy, and putting it off will make you depressed.

Remember what I said about laziness being a short circuit in your brain?

The answer then is to change your short-term wrong emotion (pain avoidance) to match your long-term correct emotion (satisfaction of working toward your goal).

Here is the five-part formula for doing this:

1. Identify and quarantine your Procrastination Tools.

There are two kinds of Procrastination Tools (as I call them):

1. Silly activities like watching TV or playing computer games.
2. Useful activities that are less important.

If the Procrastination Tool you use is a silly activity, then set aside a specific time to do that thing. Plan it, and give yourself a limit. For example, say: “At noon, I will surf the Internet for only 20 minutes.”

This also reconfigures your mind to link task completion with getting a reward at the end of it.

If you procrastinate by doing a useful activity that is less important, then triage it. Put it lower on your priority list.

I’m a huge believer in to-do lists, but the items on your list must be ordered based on how soon you need to get to them.

If you’re having guests to your house and need to prepare for it, you don’t want to feel rushed. So other things, like paying your bills that aren’t due for another three weeks, can wait.

2. Vividly imagine the pain you’ll have if you don’t complete the task.

If your house isn’t ready for the guests, you’ll feel embarrassed because you asked them to come to your place for a special occasion, and if your house is a complete wreck, then it makes it seem like you didn’t want them to come over and don’t care about them.

Feel this pain right now.

3. Now visualize the task as if you’ve already finished it.

When you’ve got a house that’s clean for your guests, you feel happy, because it shows the people that you care about them enough to give them a great experience at your house. Allow yourself to feel that way right now, before you’ve even begun.

4. Change the way you talk to yourself.

Tony Robbins and a lot of other self-help gurus talk about this, because it works like magic.

Change the current things you say to yourself — such as “I wish I had the energy to get started cleaning my house” and “I wish I wasn’t procrastinating on getting it ready for the guests” to this…

“What kinds of things do I ENJOY about cleaning the house?” and “How can I get this done?”

You see how these new thoughts will change the way you feel about the task?

Finally…

5. Take the next small action.

In Getting Things Done, David Allen says the simple solution is to always ask the question, What’s the next physical action I need to take? So, rather than have “get tires changed” on your to-do list, you should have “get out the phone book and look up tire shops.”

You see how focusing on the next action is way easier than focusing on the overall task?

Rather than have “clean my house to get it ready for guests,” you should have “pick up trash on the living room floor.”

The first is a vague goal that sounds overwhelming. The second is clear and easily doable. Get that small thing done, and now you’ve got momentum and have accomplished something tangible. Your feelings have changed for the better, and you’re no longer procrastinating.

How often do you hear yourself saying that? It’s a dead end. Let me explain.

The startling truth about motivation is that you don’t get motivated to do something until after you’ve started doing it.

If you sit around waiting until you feel the fire inside you, you’ll just keep doing nothing. This is because, as Zig Ziglar has said,

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why I recommend both daily.

(Here is the source for that and other motivational quotes.)

That’s not all. There’s a logical problem with waiting till you’re motivated — it means you must want to do that thing more than anything else at the time.

As an example, let’s say you got a job in sales and your task is to call business prospects to see if they want to buy. When would you ever want to do that more than anything else? Never! It sucks to make those calls, especially if you’re not naturally outgoing!

And even if you did decide you wanted to do it more than anything else, you’d still need to make that exact same choice tomorrow. That’s a huge risk since you might decide you’d rather just sit around and play games on your computer that day.

So that is why to get started on a task, what you need is something other than motivation. What you need is a lack of choice. That gives you focus, when your only option is to do the thing you need to get done.

Eliminate all other possibilities. Make a rule for yourself that you cannot do anything or think about anything other than making those phone calls.

When you don’t have time to think about your other options, it becomes 100 times easier to get started on your task. You may think about how much you hate it, but at least you’ll do it!

(Of course, it’s much better have a positive attitude, but that will come in time, once you’ve developed a goal-oriented mindset.)

So remember: never sit around waiting until you feel inspired before starting something.

Action Questions:

1. What is your goal you want to accomplish? (The more specific the better. For instance you could want to make $100,000 this year.)

2. What are you willing to do to achieve your goal? (Again, be specific. If you’re a salesperson whose goal is to make a six figure income, don’t say “whatever it takes.” Instead say, “I’m willing to call as many clients as it takes to have one appointment set up for each day of the week.”

Once you’ve answered those two questions, and you’ve eliminated all other possibilities of things you can do, you’re ready to take action. And then once you’re actually doing it, you may just find yourself feeling motivated!

I’ll try to answer your question in a future blog post.

“Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man.”

- Jimmy Lyons, a successful jazz musician. Source: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~steel/procrastinus/quotes/quotes.html (There are other great procrastination quotes there as well.)

I used to be a terrible procrastinator who couldn’t get anything done. It felt like my life was out of control. I missed out on so many great opportunities, costing me untold amounts of money and lost career goals. (I spent almost all of my twenties unemployed.) I couldn’t ever just get started on anything, from exercise to housecleaning. And worst of all, I hated myself.

Then I stumbled onto the secrets of overcoming my procrastination, and started applying them, and it changed my life in a big way. I’ve gone from being stressed out (yes, idleness causes stress)… always doing things at the last minute (if I did them at all)… and doing low quality work —

– to burying my old limitations, and becoming a motivated person who charges full forces toward each goal — and doesn’t stop till my dream comes true. And if someone like me can do it, then you can do it too.

The first step in overcoming procrastination is to figure out what the repercussions are of procrastinating on something vs. the benefits of doing it. Take the time to think it through. As an example, suppose you’re out of shape, and you’ve been procrastinating on starting a weight lifting program.

You know that weightlifting has many benefits:

• It gives you good muscle tone, making you more attractive.
• It gives you more strength, so you can do common activities like carrying bags of groceries without straining or getting worn out.
• It improves your resting metabolism, so you literally burn fat while you sleep, which allows you to eat more and not gain weight.

Now that you’ve thought about the many benefits you’ll get from the thing you want to do, it’s time to consider the repercussions of NOT doing it.

With our example, if you procrastinate on weightlifting:

• You won’t have to put out the effort to pump the iron, BUT…
• Your metabolism will remain low, which harms your health.
• You’ll get more flabby and fat.
• You’ll be weak physically and have a low amount of energy.

So clearly in this case, the benefits of doing it outweigh the benefits of not doing it.

Another example: suppose you sell something on eBay, and someone wins the auction. You could put off packaging up the item and mailing it… but you know that the result will be an angry buyer who will demand a refund and give you a bad feedback score. That enflames you with a single-minded goal to get down to the post office ASAP.

Sometimes, however, the benefits of procrastinating are higher. For example, if you’ve got a looming deadline on a paper you need to write, then it’s better to put off vacuuming until tomorrow.

So if you’re procrastinating on something, you always need to ask yourself this:

What are the benefits of doing the task vs. the repercussions of not doing it?

If the repercussions aren’t that severe, and putting off the task frees you up to do something more important, then you should cross the task off your list for today.

But what if you’re procrastinating on something that truly needs to get done? I’ll answer that in the next post.

Action Step: Think of the task you’re currently putting off. Write it at the top of a piece of paper or a word processor document. Now write the benefits of doing the task, just as I did above in the example. Now write down the advantages of NOT doing the task, along with the disadvantages of not doing the task. When you think about the benefits of doing the tasks vs. not doing it, what makes more sense?

However, laziness is different from substance abuse because, while AA says you’re powerless to get over your alcoholism, you can become motivated and overcome your sloth. My life is proof of that, and your life will be too as you keep coming back to this site to work through the program.

Recognizing your laziness is crucial. You cannot recover from a problem unless you first realize it exists.

This is the toughest step for everybody who tries to improve themselves. You see, psychologically there’s a natural inclination for people to think they’re special.

So it’s time to drop the ego and realize the pain that laziness has caused for you. Once you’ve pinpointed the problem, you can get moving and get results!

Here’s another good quote from Ben Franklin from The Way to Wealth (1758) that shows how bad of a problem it is to be lazy…

“…sloth, by bringing on diseases, absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears; while the used key is always bright, as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting, that The sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that There will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says.”

Question: What specific failure has laziness caused in your life? What goals has it prevented you from reaching? For example, did it cause you to lose a job? Did it cause you to gain weight? To keep smoking? In my own life, laziness caused me to flunk out of school, then start a business that failed because of my lack of motivation.

That’s the most unproductive thing you can say, according to researchers cited in this Yahoo! Finance article on multitasking.

You see, humans are terrible at doing more than one thing at a time, even though most of us think we’re good at it. But when we multitask, two things happen:
1. We get less done.
2. The quality of what we do is lower.

There’s a resumption cost of several seconds every time you get back to task that got interrupted. You get into flow again, and–whammo!–you switch to some other task and get hit with more resumption cost. As you’d imagine, this lost time adds up.

That means it’s faster to do one thing at a time instead of trying to multitask.

The other problem with multitasking: you make more mistakes, and the quality of your work declines.

“Multitasking doesn’t look to be one of the great strengths of human cognition,” says James C. Johnston, a research psychologist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It’s almost inevitable that each individual task will be slower and of lower quality.”

MIT researchers found (by doing MRI scans on brains of test subjects) that it’s impossible for the brain to think about more than one thing at a time. Net result: more emails you forgot to proofread before hitting “send,” more mistakes on the paper you wrote, and more careless errors on your client’s project.

Multitasking can be such a temptation. As an entrepreneur, I struggle with it myself. It’s easy to have a lull in a task and then say to yourself, “Gee I wonder if I got any email.”

But now that you know that you can do things faster and with fewer mistakes if you do one thing at a time, you’ll resist that temptation and stay focused. Just that one change can be worth thousands of dollars in increased productivity.

Working toward your goals and achieving them brings you long term happiness. But in the short run, the primitive part of our brain that wants to move away from pain and toward pleasure kicks in.

Study after study has shown that activities make us happy. An article from the USA Today titled Psychologists now know what makes people happy, archived here, has this to say:

Life satisfaction occurs most often when people are engaged in absorbing activities that cause them to forget themselves, lose track of time and stop worrying. “Flow” is the term Claremont Graduate University psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced cheeks-sent-mee-hi) coined to describe this phenomenon.

People in flow may be sewing up a storm, doing brain surgery, playing a musical instrument or working a hard puzzle with their child. The impact is the same: A life of many activities in flow is likely to be a life of great satisfaction, Csikszentmihalyi says. And you don’t have to be a hotshot to get there.

“One of the happiest men I ever met was a 64-year-old Chicago welder with a fourth-grade education,” he says. The man took immense pride in his work, refusing a promotion to foreman that would have kept him from what he loved to do. He spent evenings looking at the rock garden he built, with sprinklers and floodlights set up to create rainbows.

Teenagers experience flow, too, and are the happiest if they consider many activities “both work and play,” Csikszentmihalyi says. Flow stretches someone but pleasurably so, not beyond his capacity. “People feel best when doing what they do best,” he says.

This brings us back, though, to how easy it is to be lazy. Biologically, our brains (like the brains of any other animal) want us to have pleasure and shrink from pain, with the least amount of effort.

So in order to get going — to achieve that satisfying state of flow — it requires an initial burst of special effort to get past that short circuit in your mind. But after that, you’ll feel a deep, long-term bliss.

“It’s possible,” Thomas said. “You have to sustain concentration on your opponents.”

He went on to add:

“I just stayed in my hotel room and watched tape. I never got involved in the atmosphere of the Finals. My first Finals we’d played the Lakers, and we went out there and won Game 1 and lost Game 2. But we wanted to make sure we didn’t get caught up in the whole Hollywood atmosphere of Los Angeles. The people there tried to suck us up into that; they sent limousines to our hotel to take us to the Playboy Club and to parties. But we didn’t go for it. Instead, 24 hours a day I was thinking about the opponent I was going to play against.”

Source: NBA.com: Handling the Pressure

So how does this translate to your life? The solution is to concentrate on your opponents or enemies, since success is the best revenge. (If you don’t have any enemies, invent some.)

When you’re doing work, imagine how you’re gaining an advantage over that person and leaving them in the dust.

A lot of successful entrepreneurs have got an axe to grind. A lot of successful people in business got really angry about something that happened in their life, and the passion for their work is a way to channel their energy.