How you know
You've had a genuinely useful week and the stalled thing hasn't moved.
Something to say
“I've been working round this instead of on it. What's actually in the way?”
It's easier to spot this afterwards than at the time. Give it a week before you decide it isn't yours.
Two ways in
One is a habit. The other is one person.
Neither is the better one. Pick whichever matches the thing that is actually bothering you.
On your own
The habit, not the incident.
Being busy is the easiest place there is to hide from the one thing you can't finish. The work you did was real. It just wasn't this.
- Put the stalled thing first in the day, before anything you know you can finish.
- If you can't move it, say so out loud to somebody. A stuck thing people know about is a different problem from a stuck thing they don't.
- Name the smallest piece of it that would count as finished, and do only that.
With somebody in mind
The same friction, one person.
Something that's stopped is nearly always stopped on a person, and that person is usually waiting on something too. They're not the hold-up. They're the next one along.
- Find out who the thing is actually sitting with, then ask them what they're waiting for.
- Offer to do the bit that isn't yours, once. If it still doesn't move, the problem is bigger than the two of you and now you can say so.
One of these, not all of them. And in your own words, because ours won't sound like you.
Where this sharpens
It lands hardest with two of the five.
Not because anybody is difficult. These are just the two who reach for something different first, at the same moment.
Which one is yours
You are reading The Doer. Is that actually you?
Ten situations, about three minutes, no sign-up. It tells you which of the five you reach for first — and which version of this page is yours.
Five readings
This plays differently depending on what you reach for first.
Pick the one that sounds most like you. Reading a dimension is not a claim that you are one.