Writer's Block, or the Wantrepreneur Blues
I like the triad he breaks it down into. Here&#x27;s the tricks I try to get over missing one leg of the tripod:<p><pre><code>    &gt; Energy and Direction, No Time
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I have a wife, kids, pets and work full time so this is my default state. Things that help:<p>1. Get off my damn phone &#x2F; reddit &#x2F; twitter &#x2F; whatever. Consuming media on the Internet is junk food for the attention span. I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, &quot;I&#x27;ll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something.&quot; The next thing I know, it&#x27;s three hours later, every animated GIF and cute kitten link on Reddit is purple, and I&#x27;m filled with regret.<p>I trying now to break my habit of consuming stuff on the web. It&#x27;s ultimately not satisfying. A little news-reading is important, but any more than fifteen minutes a day or so is wasted.<p>This frees up an astonishing amount of time.<p>2. Get better at working on things in small pieces. I&#x27;m writing a book right now that&#x27;s projected to be about 200,000 words. It builds up two implementations of the same programming language, and each implementation is spread across multiple chapters, so the book is <i>highly</i> intertwined.<p>You might expect that to require a ton of mental state and lot writing sessions to work on. Nope. I usually work on it less than an hour a day (which, granted, means it&#x27;s going to take forever to finish). I rely on a test suite, Git, a log, and notes to myself to make it easier to pause and resume work on it and break it down into small pieces.<p>3. Decide what <i>not</i> to spend time on. Our natural tendency is to want to say yes to things -- new projects, new hobbies, new outings, new toys to play with. But since time is finite, each of those means cutting out something that&#x27;s already in my life. I try to be more cognizant of that and proactively choose to <i>not</i> invest time in things I don&#x27;t want to be doing right now even if I would like to.<p><pre><code>    &gt; Direction and Time, No Energy
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For me, this is usually laziness or analysis paralysis. Some amount of laziness is OK -- nothing wrong with some chilling and self-care. Relaxing feels good, but I find it doesn&#x27;t feel as good as the satisfaction of accomplishing something, so I try to remember that.<p>Analysis paralysis is my personal demon. I try to remember that anything is generally a more productive path than getting stuck and doing nothing. If I&#x27;m stuck because I don&#x27;t have enough information to pick a path, walking down one path is a great way to get that information, even if it requires some backtracking later.<p><pre><code>    &gt; Energy and Time, No Direction
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For me, this is usually analysis paralysis at a larger scale. The kids are finally out of the house and I&#x27;ve got four hours of free time. What project should I work on? Oh, God, I can&#x27;t pick. Again, I try to force myself to pick <i>something</i> because any choice is better than no choice.<p>I don&#x27;t personally often have the vague &quot;I don&#x27;t know what I want to do at all&quot; problem I hear a lot from bloggers. I think many of those are coming from people who want to <i>be</i> a certain thing (author, entrepreneur, successful open source project lead, etc.) and don&#x27;t want to <i>do</i> a certain thing (edit paragraphs, make sales cold calls, reply to bug reports for five hours).<p>They want the reward of the cachet associated with the identity but either don&#x27;t want to or don&#x27;t know how to do the work to get that. Personally, I&#x27;m generally more motivated by the process than the product, so I don&#x27;t fall into that trap very often. I don&#x27;t have enough self-discipline to spend time on things when I don&#x27;t enjoy the basic mechanical process of it.