Why I Can’t Start (Even When I Want To)
Lately, I have been losing momentum. Again.
It's been hard(er) to work on the (cognitively) demanding projects. And I don't necessarily mean it's somehow harder when I actually get down to it and my Pomodoro timer is actually running (although there could be a bit of that too). What is indeed hard is getting the timer started and getting to work in the first place.
I believe it's mostly because there's a very specific set of thought patterns that make me delay starting something that is perceived as being "uncharted" combined with a pesky underlying belief that if you do get started on something you must necessarily ace it or at least make a serious dent in it immediately. I think one apt term for such tasks is "daunting".
At least for me, the same principle seems to also apply to more "mundane" tasks than working on an NLP/coding/discourse-analysis project. For me, every task with a bit of "uncharted-ness" about it, where I just don't know (well) what to do and how to do it exactly and what the outcome might be, is associated with that same resistance. Listing an item for sale is hard, writing a professional email to someone you don't know is hard, making that phone call is hard, finalizing that paperwork is hard.
But then it's also not only a matter of getting started on a daunting task (which for some of us may be almost every task). It's also hard to build and maintain momentum. And it's very easy to lose it. Losing momentum is like falling off a cliff. You build your way up at the expense of immense effort, and it only takes a short moment to slip and fall back over the edge. And then you're falling.
I now also think that the desired change comes from recognizing your specific recurring patterns of thinking/acting and declaring war on them. That is why I try to notice them and put them into words. Because if you're very fuzzy on what it is that you're actually trying to combat, how are you supposed to combat it exactly? Many (or maybe most) of my posts are actually about exposing these patterns. Interestingly, writing and subsequently posting these essays is one of the ways I am fighting the very patterns that the essays are meant to expose.
So, how am I fighting this pattern? By reminding myself of something I have discussed at length elsewhere: that if you have been stalling, if you have been falling, if you have been losing momentum, just get started on something that now looks daunting with no expectation of making any meaningful progress or getting the desired outcome. Getting started is the progress.
This whole thing isn't a new war, and we aren't the first to fight it either. Decades before he wrote The War of Art, the writer Steven Pressfield found himself stranded in New York, "making twenty bucks a night driving a cab and running away full-time" from his real work -- writing. He recounts a night when he finally hit absolute bottom:
One night, alone in my $110-a-month sublet, I hit bottom in terms of having diverted myself into so many phony channels so many times that I couldn't rationalize it for one more evening. I dragged out my ancient Smith-Corona, dreading the experience as pointless, fruitless, meaningless, not to say the most painful exercise I could think of. For two hours I made myself sit there, torturing out some trash that I chucked immediately into the shitcan. That was enough. I put the machine away. I went back to the kitchen. In the sink sat ten days of dishes. For some reason I had enough excess energy that I decided to wash them. The warm water felt pretty good. The soap and sponge were doing their thing. A pile of clean plates began rising in the drying rack. To my amazement I realized I was whistling. (Pressfield, 2011, Book One, "Resistance and Healing" section, para. 6)
What counted was that he sat down. He tortured out trash, threw it away (into the "shitcan"), and then went to the kitchen to wash his dishes.
So, if you are staring down a daunting task/project today (or every day, like I do), give yourself permission to produce absolute garbage or fail initially (at a more "mundane" task). Getting started is your progress. Then repeat for another task. And maybe one more after that.
By the way, this is how Steven Pressfield himself interprets the episode: "Do you understand? I hadn't written anything good. It might be years before I would, if I ever did at all. That didn't matter. What counted was that I had, after years of running from it, actually sat down and done my work" (Pressfield, 2011, Book One, "Resistance and Healing" section, para. 8).
References
Pressfield, S. (2011). The war of art: Winning the inner creative battle. Black Irish Entertainment. (Original work published 2002).
Originally published: 2026-09-08