Moving the Needle Forward

What can you do when you don’t feel like doing anything? Or when time simply doesn’t allow for deep, focused work on your project?

My advice in this case is to do something. Keep your hands (and mind) in the project. Don’t allow yourself to fall into one of those situations where it’s been weeks or months and you haven’t even opened the file (we’ve all been there).

In an ideal world, you’d have time every day to do deep, focused work on your dissertation, book, or other writing project. But life throws us curveballs all the time!

To prepare for these (inevitable) moments, take five-ten minutes right now to make a list of the Least Onerous Tasks (LOTs) associated with your project. On the days when you just don’t feel like working on it, or maybe you would work on it if you could, but you only have ten minutes of time, scattered throughout the day, to devote to it—what are some small things you could do to keep the needle moving forward?

If you have this list ready, you’ll be more likely to work for whatever small amount of time you can manage on a particular day. Over time, those little blocks of time will add up and, more importantly, if you keep your hands and head in your project, you’ll break through whatever resistance is keeping you feeling stuck or sluggish toward your project right now.

What goes on the list will vary from person to person—both depending on the specific tasks that your project requires and based on what feels like a light versus heavy lift to you.

But here are some “light lift” ideas to get you started:

• Find 2-3 articles related to your topic

• Read through 1 page of handwritten notes (or 2-3 pages of typed notes)

• Free-write for 5-15 minutes on your topic

• Fill in this prompt: “If I were able to get out of my own way and make real progress on this writing, here’s what I would tell myself to do:”

• Or this one: “I know I need to write today, but here are all of the other things on my mind that are keeping me from writing:” After writing on this for whatever length of time you’ve chosen, then write 2-3 “next steps” to move your work forward at the bottom of the page. At your next session, you can either dive right in with these next steps or continue freewriting for as long as necessary, until you feel ready to get back into the project itself. This one might feel like you’re not actually working on your project, but there’s something keeping you from writing, and you might as well excavate it so it doesn’t continue to fester and potentially tank your progress.

• Any project-related task you consider “mindless,” easy to do, or even fun! For me this would be data entry, coding, creating excel spreadsheets, creating a codebook, performing simple calculations like interrater reliability or descriptive stats.

• Do you need to make a phone call or visit an archive or library but you’ve been putting it off? Maybe today’s the day to do it, just to mix things up!

Whatever goes on your list of LOTs, remember that the key is to keep your hands in your project.

Think of Joli Jensen’s maxim that what all writers need is high-frequency, low-stress contact with their writing. Every day does not need to be a homerun. Think too of Gretchen Rubin’s advice for habit adopters—she tells readers that she managed to build an exercise habit by following two rules: Always do it on a Monday (start the week off strong) and never skip more than one day in a row.

Good luck!

Photo by Hector J. Rivas via Unsplash