Productive Procrastination Won’t Restart Your Project. Brainwashing Yourself Might
I just got back from a few weeks of vacation, and now it's time to pick up my passion project right where I left off. But there's a problem: Even the thought of resuming this stalled project feels like an enormous undertaking. Instead of diving into my first Pomodoro session head-on, I have found myself putting it off day after day. I tell myself I'm "not ready" yet and that I should "ease into it" by doing something less challenging, like organizing my physical or digital clutter or doing some cleaning. There’s some truth to this (popular?) strategy, but let's be honest -- there’s a lot of bullshit and cope here, too.
So, how do you overcome this inertia and rebuild momentum? The intuitive path is to just start doing -- anything, really -- like that "warm-up" decluttering and cleaning (or alphabetizing your spice rack ...). But that's a trap. To actually get back in the saddle (faster), you have to do something that feels highly counterintuitive.
But what kinds of "projects" am I referring to here specifically and why is restarting so incredibly hard? First and foremost, we are looking at those projects that are at least somewhat complex and at least somewhat challenging. These are usually the kinds of activities that fit into the "Important & Not Urgent" quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix -- things like building a (pet) coding project or writing a book. When you are working on them day in and day out, you get into a cadence. You load all the details of the project into your "mental RAM", and because the sessions follow each other closely, none of that context gets "swapped out". Uptime is going up and momentum is being built.
But when life gets in the way -- an illness, urgent tasks, or a vacation (there is always something ...) -- your mental RAM clears. Once you put a complex project on hold, the thought of reloading all that information into your brain is terrifying.
So this is me now. At this very moment.
I had a lot going on before I went on vacation. Most things are easy to resume. But there is one project of exactly that sort: inherently complex, with no external deadlines, motivation, or reward structure -- just my own enthusiasm. And it's as "Important & Not Urgent" as it gets.
Surprisingly, a milder version of restarting a project like that is writing a new post for this blog (you make call this productive procrastination too, but I beg to differ). If you have been following my posts or just cast a cursory glance at "blog" page, you might say: "Dude, what are you talking about? You have never posted here with anything remotely resembling regularity!" Guilty as charged. I never have. But there's a reason why writing a new post feels almost as daunting as picking up a more "serious" project.
Writing is challenging. Especially the getting-started part of it. There's always at least some resistance. And even if you don't write regularly, it's way easier to write when the action of writing is embedded in a daily routine of overcoming the resistance through working on other meaningful things. (I hope that makes sense.) In a nutshell, consistently working on my serious-ish project makes it easier to write posts for this blog (even though the writing does not happen as often as I would like it to). And this exact support structure is thrown out of whack when you put it all on hold.
So what do you do to overcome the inertia and pick up momentum again? Two things.
First, you must just get started doing something. I know it sounds obvious but bear with me. The intuitive path is to actually do exactly that -- start doing something, anything, basically. And this has been my default strategy for a long time. This is the kind of brainwashing that I would normally do: "I can't just go from doing nothing to doing something that involves a lot of complexity and willpower, so I'll get started with something easier, like cleaning, organizing, and decluttering, and build up from there." My experience now tells me it's a trap. You may actually do a bit of these "warm-up" activities, but don't let them spiral out of control (which they almost inevitably do). The goal is to start doing that which is challenging and daunting, not some easy substitute.
But then there's an important "second" without which the "first" may not even work. And this is where the actual brainwashing must happen. The standard advice is to "start small". My advice is to start with nothing. Here's what you do. Before you start the first session you must brainwash yourself into believing that you absolutely do not have to produce anything that you might see as meaningful. Nothing at all.
Because reloading that mental RAM is so daunting, you have to trick your brain. Give yourself permission to just stare at a certain part of the project. Doing this, you're giving yourself permission not only not to produce anything new but also not even to catch up. That's it. This is the mindset. And it has been working for me so far.
In other words, the trick is to separate starting from producing: return to the actual project, but demand no output from yourself.
Will you actually have done something meaningful by the time the session is over? Very likely, yes. You may end the session with a few rough paragraphs for a new post or for a book chapter or you may actually write a few lines of code or tweak something in the old one. You may actually want to extend the session or take a break and then start a new one. But the main point is not to expect that when you're only getting started.
Pick the project you’ve been avoiding all week -- or longer. Open the document or code editor, set a timer for 15 minutes, and give yourself permission to produce nothing. Your only job is to look at the thing long enough for some of its context to load back into RAM (or to get bored of looking at the blank page and write a few awkward sentences or something like that).
P.S. This is almost exactly how I tricked myself into writing this post.
Originally published: 2026-07-24