When You Can’t Do One Thing, Do Something Else

The world’s greatest productivity hack is to love what you do. When you actually enjoy what you do most of the time, you’ll want to do more of it. You don’t have control over everything, but the more control you can obtain, the better off you will be.

But this might be the second-greatest productivity trick: when you’re stuck on something, don’t spend too much time trying to get unstuck. Instead, just do something else!

I know this might sound either counterintuitive or overly simplistic (or both), but hear me out. I promise you this is hugely effective. No joke, it can change your life, or at least make a lot of things much easier. Also, results may vary, but if you’re someone who tends to avoid, you’ll benefit even more.

Inaction is the enemy; doing something is the way out of being stuck.

Keeping this in mind will help you again and again. It’s how I live my life, as someone who often feels stuck, frequently avoids, and just kind of struggles with task initiation. When I say “it’s how I live my life,” I mean this quite literally: every day I practice this method, and often many times a day. I find myself avoiding something, and rather than trying to push through, I do other things first. Often, after getting a few of those things done, I feel much more ready to handle the thing I’ve been avoiding.

The Benefits of Doing Something Rather than Nothing

There are so many!

1. It feels good to do something

2. It feels bad to do nothing*

3. Other stuff gets done

4. You build up momentum that may make it easier to face that thing you’re avoiding

5. You gain perspective that changes how you feel about the thing you’re avoiding (for example, maybe you realize there’s a different way to handle it)

6. If you struggle with negative self-talk—“you’re a loser who never does anything”—now you can say, “Hey this one thing is hard for whatever reason, but we’ll get there, and also we did some other stuff so that’s pretty cool”

*I mean when you want to do something. Obviously if you’re trying to relax, that’s different.

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I had been living this way for years when I heard about the formal concept of structured procrastination, which codifies it a bit more. It comes from the Stanford philosopher John Perry, and starts with this baseline assumption:

Procrastinators rarely want to do nothing. They want to avoid doing one particular thing.

Perry’s insight was that procrastination doesn’t have to mean inactivity. Put something daunting at the top of the list, and suddenly all the other useful things become strangely appealing.

So instead of agonizing over how to prioritize your to-do list (which is what everyone tries to do, am I right?), you worry less about getting the order right and get down to work on whatever needs to be done.

If you’re not sure what to do instead, try:

* a small task with a clear finish

* something physical (pushups, go for a walk, etc.)

* something useful that you’ve been meaning to do anyway

As I said at the top, this might sound simple, but once you do it, you realize how powerful it is. The argument against this method is that priorities matter, you need to develop self-discipline, and so on.

But aside from the situation I’ll mention in a moment, most of the time these arguments miss the point. This isn’t a method for deciding what matters. It’s a method for what to do when you’re not doing what matters.

The point is that some things are hard, and sometimes we get in situations where we resist doing them, and no amount of pep talk will get us to take action.

But if we start doing ANYTHING ELSE that’s worth doing, we’re going to a) feel better, and b) have better odds of actually tackling that thing we’re avoiding.

But what about when you NEED to get unstuck?

Sure, sure. It happens. In these cases you have other options. You might have to force it a little. Make a to-dread list, one of my favorite tools for when I’m really putting off important tasks. Yes, I have an actual list for things I’m putting off. It works.

But most of the time, you don’t need to do things at a certain time. You can do them later, or—another favorite—not do them at all.

Meanwhile, instead of worrying about those things (while not doing anything about them) you can be busy doing lots of other cool things. Progress feels good and can become self-reinforcing as you go.

Build a life around what you love to do—that’s the most important goal.

And when you get stuck on something, do something else.

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