Anatomy of a Breakthrough describes what it means to be stuck and ways to break free from stagnation to achieve breakthroughs.

TL;DR

Getting stuck is inevitable. Learn to embrace stuck moments as opportunities for growth by adopting strategies to control your emotions, thoughts, and actions to become unstuck.

To be stuck is to be human

People often find themselves stuck but it’s usually hidden from our sight because we overtly broadcast the triumphant breakthroughs and wins. To free yourself, you need to acknowledge when you’re stuck and adopt strategies to master your emotional responses, apply the right mental models, and act.

Many get stuck in the middle

When people start working toward a goal, they start quickly. And as people get closer to the goal, the speed up, too (known as the goal gradient effect). This means people usually get stuck in the middle of their goal.

• Eliminate the middle. Break down large tasks in the middle into smaller, manageable, achievable goals to prevent the lulls. Treat yourself when you reach these intermediate milestones.
• Plateaus will occur. Vary the approaches on how to work through the middle of the goal by embracing new strategies when old ways no longer deliver results.
• At the first blush of difficulty, carry on. Getting unstuck almost always takes a little longer than we expect.

Tame the anxiety

Being stuck leaves us feeling trapped and anxious. Often, high levels of anxiety and perfectionism hinder progress and creativity. Learn to fail well by pausing and removing the pressure.

• Reframe the threats and hardships as challenges, like a slightly more intense rainbow road on Mario Kart.
• Practice radical acceptance. Instead of visualizing your success, imagine the worst-case scenario. It’s not so bad, right?
• High standards can leave you feeling demotivated and hinder creativity. Don’t try to maximize everything and opt for good enough (satisfice).
• Adopt a progressive definition of success. Start low and increase the standards for success if you don’t want to “settle for lower standards”—though there’s nothing wrong with that, too.

Mental models to get unstuck

• Counterintuitively, apply constraints to free yourself. This lessens the ego depletion and minimizes decision fatigue. For example, write a six-word memoir. Mine would be, “Wait a minute, I was trafficked?”
• Practice addition by subtraction. The old adage of “Keep It Simple Stupid” works. Example: instead of adding training wheels for toddlers to learn how to balance themselves on a bike, balance bikes removed the pedals.
• Brand new ideas are overrated. Instead, try to combine two or three existing ideas. This can also apply in an organization where you combine different people on the team. Diversity is valuable for removing redundant ideas and thoughts.
• Don’t get too attached to your early ideas. Studies show in an ideation session, creative ideas tend to improve and/or remain towards the second half of the session. This is known as the creative cliff illusion. This is because the obvious rarely produces good results.
• Relying on a single skill or approach can lead to vulnerability when challenges arise. Stay curious and build a diverse set of skills and resources to provide a safety net for getting unstuck. You can do this by crowdsourcing opinions, having a conversation with yourself and playing devil’s advocate, browsing rather than searching, and keeping a journal of facts and ideas that puzzle you.

Just do it

• Explore and experiment first, then execute. You’ll know which phase you’re mentally at by your responses. Are you saying yes to most incoming opportunities? Then you’re in the exploration and experimentation phase. Are you saying no? Then you’re in the execution phase.
• You don’t learn by reading everything, but by figuring out which parts you don’t have to read. Figure out shortcuts you can take in the beginning of your exploration.
• Wander to inspire creativity. Literally and figuratively. Changing where you’re working, getting up and moving, and performing fluid dances can assist with divergent thinking. Equally, allowing your mind to wander can free you up to consider creative ideas.
• Micro-dose on actions. Build habits and do a bite-sized action every day so you don’t get stuck as often.
• Use nouns to describe your actions to deepen the association. For example: instead of saying, “I run,” say, “I’m a runner.” The former is an action you’re doing but the latter defines your identity based on your actions. The latter tends to promote greater consistency and habit.