Blocked!

It’s an invisible wall. Solid and unmoving. I’ve been hitting it without realising it’s there.

My attention has been focused elsewhere. Managing the immediacy of the lockdown, adjusting work patterns, home life, scrabbling to find positives and possible ways forward, rather than treading water and waiting.

Yet it’s becoming more obvious there’s an obstacle in my way, that I can’t see.

I’m trying to get back into the routine I had, and get on with the activities I saw as critical and a priority.

But my attempts to do this take me nowhere. And I berate myself for procrastinating, which I know comes easy when I don’t really want to do something. Some how though, this is different.

And it’s disconcerting because I’m not sure what this means. What effect will this have for me longer term. What am I missing if I ignore it?

It’s there, yet I can’t make sense of it. So am I wasting my precious time trying to figure out what it is and how I overcome it?

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I’ve talked before about fear and procrastination, and I’ve found ways to help me through those situations, which is why this feels different.

So how do you deal with an unknown? Something that’s difficult to make sense of and unclear what the impact would be if you ignore it.

It may not be obvious at first. It’s taken me a while to realise there’s a repeating pattern going on. And I find it helpful to acknowledge and thank myself for having spotted what’s happening and choosing to do something about it.

Sounds a bit cringeworthy when I say that, yet I also know I could have easily continued to ignore it and then it would have grown into something much bigger and harder to deal with. Acknowledging to myself that I spotted it, helps remind me that it’s worth paying attention to the little niggles that sit there and don’t go away.

So what can you do?

At first, I tried numerous ways of ending my procrastinating tactics; blanking out time in my calendar, turning off my email, attempting to do the work first thing before anything else, creating a reward incentive.

Then I dismissed it as no longer being such an important activity!

After realising, this was simply ignoring a problem that wasn’t going away, I sought inspiration looking for different ways I could approach it.

I tried to reason and make sense of what has stopped me from simply getting on with this work.

And now I’ve realised that it’s an invisible blocker that I may never full grasp.

What’s become more apparent is there’s a balance, that as I’ve swung one way (I’ve got to fully get to grips and understand what’s stopping me doing this) to the other way (ignore and not bother), I’ve become immersed so deeply with everything that it’s preventing me from taking a look down at what’s really going on.

Some activities rightly no longer have the priority I once gave them. They still have importance, but the emphasis has changed.

Whilst I usually rely on gaining a deeper understanding to help me solve problems, a lack of information makes that difficult to do. So I’m focusing on what it takes to get something done. Finding a crack in that invisible wall that gives me a finger hold.

I’ll think “what was that all about” later.

And what makes the difference now, is that having got my head around the importance of these activities and adjusted their priority within my work, the frustration I’ve been feeling has lessened. And that’s helped me move on with the things that do matter right here and now.