Productivity Tip – What To Do When You Have a Mental Block

We all have those days, we have something we need to do but we just can't get ourselves to do it.

We start working and find ourselves surfing the net, reading blogs, visiting discussion boards, having an instant messenger chat or cleaning our office, anything except the actual job we have to do.

It happens to all of us and there are ways to beat this and regain our productivity.

The first and easiest is to do something else, if you have different types of work to do maybe you can do something different right now and return to the original task later, just be careful not to postpone anything indefinitely – but usually, at some point you get to a task that can't be delayed anymore and you have to just get the job done.

When you do have to do something you feel you just can't do right now, the first thing you have to do is to avoid any distractions at all cost.

Close your e-mail program and instant messenger as well as any other program not related directly to the job you're trying to do, disconnect from the internet if you have to, take your phone off the hook and turn off your cell phone and give the current task your entire undivided attention.

For example I'm writing this post with a bad case of writers block, not only I've shut off everything else on my computer but I'm actually typing while looking directly at the keyboard and not the screen – that way I'm giving my entire attention to writing, and not correcting typos and grammar mistakes or improving the parts I already wrote.

Obviously, you are not reading the first draft I wrote without looking at the screen, I've edited this post before posting it – but only after I finished writing it – otherwise I would have been so busy perfecting the first paragraph I wouldn't have written the rest.