business.tutsplus.com: Unless you’ve really annoyed a government, major corporation, or super villain, you’re almost certainly your own worst enemy. You procrastinate, not because some evil genius has devoted every waking minute to distracting you from your important tasks, but because you’re human. The only demons keeping you awake at night are your own.
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Mental Blocks are petrifying. They are responsible of draining people out of their strength and creativity which can be a major setback for anyone involved. However, there are ways to tackle these blocks.
1. Take Frequent breaks when doing a particular work in between different works. Taking breaks helps the mind to rejuvenate its capacity for working and bring up new ideas which is essential to keep the work going ahead.
2. Drink a lot of liquids. Liquids, especially water is the solution to everything. Water relaxes the mind and helps it regain its functionality which is immensely important.
3. Figure out what the problem is and why is the mental block so effective. Finding and fighting he core of the problem really helps people to get rid of their blocks because once they have the source of the problem, they can easily replace it with the solution for the problem.
Mental Blocks can be troublesome but they can be dealt with.
Recently I had to write a short essay for my history class, and I suffered from variations of all 5 of these mental blocks on my journey to complete it. What I found to be hardest were the issues of Procrastination and Perfectionism. I'm someone who gets distracted very easily and usually needs to be fully fed and rested before I can get any work done. This essay took me a full three days to finish because there was always some distraction that took hold of my attention, so even if I sat down to write anything, it would be about a minute before my brain was on to something else. I've found that sometimes I just have to be harsh on myself and get rid of all distractions until I write something down, which I did. The second, more terrible mental block is this idea of perfectionism. I'm not always striving for my work to be perfect, but I always want it to be something that I'm proud of, especially in history since it's a subject I truly enjoy. However, halfway through writing my mess of an essay I realized that although I was trying my best, it wasn't my best work. Not all of my essays will be. It's like when you're playing cards, and you just have a throw away, it's not that you don't care about the card, but sometimes not everything is perfect, but you need to keep playing the game.
Harry Guinness article, “How to Get Over 5 Mental Blocks That Drain Creativity”, appealed to me immediately. Procrastination (and similar mental blocks) is a problem we are aware of, but most likely aren’t dealing with, a problem we are procrastinating. There are many different ways outside factors that can add to our stress when on a project, that we presumably don't have control over. Something we can do to manage our stress is alieving bad habits called mental blocks. Harry defines metal blocks as “any psychological obstacle you put in your own way”, he goes on to describe 5 different kinds we can identify when self reflecting: Writer's block, procrastination, misplaced priorities, ignoring the important, perfectionism. I personally identified three that I actively indulge in. Like many others, I often have a problem with procrastination. Like he did with all of the mental blocks given, Harry gave a method to help with this problem. He recommended a Pomodoro timer, which I already use: the app- Forest,pomodoro timer. In Forest, you set a timer for how long you want to work, and during the duration would say that your forest is dying if you go on your phone, afterwards it sets a timer for you to relax. The other problem Identified with was misplaced priorities, I didn’t feel like he gave as concrete advice in solving that problem. Thankfully the other mental block I identified with strongly correlated and its method could help solve my misplaced Priorities. In ignoring the important he gives the solution, Eisenhower Matrix: “classifies tasks into quadrants based on two axes: importance and urgency”. All in all I have taken away two ways I can improve when relieving stress and mental blocks. I will use my forest app more often and the next time I’m making a to do list of assignments I will use the Eisenhower Matrix.
Mental blocks are some of the worst things to happen to people, and it’s certainly impacted me a great amount. I saw the title of this article and immediately knew that the contents within would apply strongly to me. I most identified with writer’s block, procrastination, and perfectionism. For one, I get in the situation a lot where I don’t know what words to write, or I can’t formulate the words in a way that I like. The solutions Harry Guiness lays out for writer’s block are already things I do. I tend to stop what I’m doing when I run into this, and make sure I break up my time into chunks so I don’t spend too long in one sitting trying to force out a paper that just won’t do it. The second one doesn’t actually work for me, since I get too picky about wording and how it sounds. My solution to that has become to outline or bullet point what I’m trying to say. That way, I don’t get distracted in trying to sort through awful writing, but can just use it later as a simple guideline. Procrastination is also something I’ve struggled with greatly. A lot of it comes from not so much getting distracted by other little things or tasks, but rather me being afraid of messing something up and therefore getting too scared to go in and start my project. I’ve actually gotten a lot better at not procrastinating in college, and planning my time better. Of course, I’m still human, so I still make mistakes and wind up leaving too much to the last minute. But in terms of this article, he doesn’t really do that much to help give solutions. Misplaced priorities is something everyone deals with, but I’ve been pretty good with that recently. I know that leaving the dorm without washing up as much or putting as much effort into my outfit is worth not getting to class late. I generally don’t ignore the important either, unless it’s something that’s really freaking me out, in which case that’s when I’ll usually try to ignore it. Lastly, perfectionism is a huge one for me. Nothing I ever do it quite good enough. There is always more I could do or improve on. Like I said at the beginning, the perfectionism ties back into procrastination. I wish he actually would give some advice on how to deal with it here.
This is a great article. I am constantly dealing with mental blocks. It’s amazing about how little things can really throw off your day and upset your mental balance. I suffer from several of these. Sometimes it is just hard to find the motivation to get something done when someone or something sucks the life out of you. I like some of the ways that the article lists out steps and tricks in order to overcome these blocks, but I feel like it doesn’t go far enough. Simply listing out a few things for each really feels slim in terms of things that people can do to overcome these obstacles. I definitely suffer from procrastination and misplaced priorities. I find it all too easy to get distracted from getting work done. The idea of setting a timer and working for that time, taking a break, and doing it all over again sounds really appealing. I’ve heard that it takes 21 days to develop a habit. I don’t have 21 days to devote that much time to because of my school load, so finding a compromise would be a good thing. Not in depth but a good starting point.
Wow, this article hits home in all too many ways. Many times that is have been working on projects or struggling to get moving on a task I find that I often think it is just me procrastinating on the project. However, after reading this article, I see that often for me it is one of the other five things that are genuinely preventing me from getting to the point where I can then cross it off my to do list and thus move on to the next task. I am now learning the skill of identifying which type of roadblock it is in order to more quickly move past it and complete the tasks or projects on hand. One thing the author said that stuck with me was "Just honestly analyze your actions and feelings, and then come up with a way to make it so they can’t affect your work" which truly sums up what each of us must do in order to be more productive.
This article really is in depth and hits on every kind of block that someone could go through when trying to create something. This summer I read a lot of books on the creative process, and management, and how the mind works. One really outlined ideas as waves that pass and go, and this article talks about that in some regards, that sometimes you just don't have something to work with and you have to wait and come back to it. Being someone who is around people whose work is based on creative ideas, I find this to be the most helpful in guiding their process along. Know that it is ok to be stuck, and expressing that when someone is going through that, is going to move things along better than forcing someone to keep reaching when they just don't have it quite yet. I think that points on procrastination are helpful, because that is something that almost everyone has to get over.
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