How to Get “Unstuck”
Every few months, I see an article or a Twitter thread, or a YouTube recommendation for "How to get 'unstuck.'" I don't know what it says about me that these algorithms keep shoving this advice in my face, but it seems like a popular enough topic to keep creating videos, articles, threads, and podcasts. But what does it mean to be "stuck"?
I understand what it means viscerally. I've been stuck many times in my life. The best way to describe it is that it feels like being in quicksand. The harder you work and the more you fight, the faster you seem to sink. It feels like the future disappears; it's as if your current routine will last for 50 years, and then you'll die. It reminds me of the quote by Journalist Studs Terkel, "Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."
When you're stuck, you're craving some sort of life. Instead, you feel void of meaning and purpose and like there's nothing you can do to break the cycle. You feel exhausted and lose a sense of hope. It's like turning up the speed on the treadmill but expecting to end up in a different place.
It sounds like depression, but when you're stuck, you don't feel depressed per se. You feel exhausted but don't have a problem sleeping or getting out of bed. You still enjoy socializing with friends on the weekend. You have a normal appetite and concentration. It just feels like you're grinding day in and day out with nothing to show for it. Like all of your hard work is for not. And will I ever make a difference? Maybe this is just an existential crisis, but this is what it feels like to be "stuck" in my mind. I get this sensation every few years. I get antsy and feel like I need to do something different. Shake things up.
So what do I do to get "unstuck"?
The Brain & Routines
Before we unpack the formula, I think it’s important to understand how we get stuck in the first place.
Our brain is made up of around 100 billion neurons, most of which are constantly “firing” or sending signals which require a shit ton of energy (our brain uses about 20% of our daily energy budget). And the biggest energy waster is an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex – the newest feature in the evolution of our brain. The prefrontal cortex is the large frontal lobe that sits behind your forehead and is responsible for “high-level thinking,” like making decisions, paying attention in class, planning for retirement, saying no to cheesecake, or delivering your best pick-up lines.
As wonderful as the prefrontal cortex is, every time we use it, we drain our energy like the Exxon Valdez. This is why we often don’t have the energy at the end of the day to write our fantasy novel, work on our side hustle, or attentively listen to our loved ones. A day of making decisions, suppressing our impulses, avoiding distractions, and learning new skills leaves us with nothing in the tank.
The good news is that our brain has a solution for this. To conserve our energy, we start to create habits and routines. When we repeatedly engage in certain behaviors, they solidify in the brain and move from the prefrontal cortex to a different part called the basal ganglia – an older part of the brain that stores memories, emotions, and habits. When a behavior becomes routine, the basal ganglia holds it and makes it automatic. This frees up some of that space in your prefrontal cortex for other activities like those foxy pick-lines, you dog.
The bad news is that these habits and routines are often reactive to the cues in our environment. We don’t intentionally create our routines but settle into them based on life’s demands, so they often lack meaning or purpose.
You don’t deliberately plan on crushing a bottle of wine every night at 5pm, but you pass the wine shop on your way home from work every day, and you have a stressful job. So you work, you wine shop, you chug, you sleep. Rinse and repeat. And then most of life starts to settle into the basal ganglia: the daily stand-ups, weekly spin class, and quarterly reports. Everything goes on autopilot. And the problem is that these routines become, well, routine and lead us to feel stagnant or “stuck.”
Pretty soon, most of your weekly activities become meaningless and just become something you do every day. Nothing we do feels truly important or valuable. None of our weekly activities contain any sort of emotional connection. And then you find yourself reading an article by a random dude on the internet. Glad to have you ;-)
So although we need these routines to save energy, we also need novelty, adventure, and a sense of awe. And we can purposely infuse these elements into our lives. My friend Jade Teta has a simple formula for this: Change & Challenge.
It’s a nice little mnemonic device that can act as the sparkplug we need to get unstuck.
Change
You may think, “Now, this is some stupid shit.” And for that, I have nothing for you. Or you might not be so hostile and simply ask, “Change what, Danny?” And to that, I say, “I don’t know, man. It’s your life.” But let me give it a shot.
The best way to implement change is to change your environment. Book two nights at a local hotel, visit your friend in New York or book a beach trip. Research shows that humans will perform the same behaviors, in the same way, every time if they’re in the same environment. But when we take a little vacay, our behaviors change. We start taking a walk, forgetting about the evening bottle of wine, or skipping the drive-thru because the cues for behaviors change.
But I get it. Traveling or changing your environment isn’t always feasible, so start by looking at your routines. Everything from the breakfast you eat to the route you take to work, the people you talk to every day, to your nighttime Law & Order binge.
Then I’d ask if you were to switch out ONE element of your daily routine, which would have the greatest impact? Back in college, I drove an hour each way to school (uphill both ways, through the snow, you know the story..). And on the way home, there was an exit with a Chick-fil-a where I’d proceed to order 20 chicken nuggets, a large fry, and a lemonade. As you can imagine, I’d swell up like a wildebeest, feel like shit, and cry the rest of the way home. Just kidding about the tears (or am I?). So one day, I decided to take an alternative route home, and wouldn’t you know it, I reduced my annual nugget intake by a thousand, stopped the tears, and got my abs back (okay, just a single ab).
What is ONE behavior you can switch up this week? Swap out your cheerios for a protein shake, call your mom on your commute to work, change gyms, or take an evening walk after work. Often just one change can cascade into another, and then bye-bye funk!
In the coaching program I head up, one of our strategies for helping clients break through plateaus is to help them do the opposite of what they’re currently doing. If they eat 2-3 large meals per day, we change to 5-6 small meals. If they do weights, we have them do cardio. If they do low carb-high fat, we do higher carb-lower fat. The idea is that the metabolism is adaptable — do the same thing for too long, it will adapt, and your results will slow or halt.
This is an idea that comes from the bodybuilding world. When you first begin weight training, your first lesson is a concept known as progressive overload.
Progressive overload is the simple idea of gradual improvement in your workout routine. It’s a slight increase in weight, frequency, number of reps, or even improved form over a period of time. This is something that’s intuitive in the weight room -- if you want to get stronger, increase the challenge -- yet ignored with our own psychology. So, just like you work those biceps, work your mind. What small change or improvement can you make to your current routine?
Now do it.
Challenge
In 2019, after crushing a bottle of champagne, my sister-in-law compelled me to sign up for a half-marathon. I’m not a “runner” in any sense of the word, and I’ve never run more than a mile without stopping in my life, but, as dunk people do, I eagerly committed.
And as hungover people do, I woke up the next day with remorse. I wanted to back out, but I already put down my credit card and made a big speech about how I’m definitely not backing out, and it’s certainly not the alcohol talking. I was on the hook.
So I half-heartedly trained and showed up to take my beating on a balmy morning in Austin in February 2020. It was as miserable as I thought it might be. I sweat so much that my tee shirt felt like a weighted vest. My nipples started to chafe, which was a new, miserable sensation. My hips began to feel like it was bone grinding on bone. People around me started to smell. Shit, I started to smell.
But as I crossed the finish line, my eyes began to well up, and I felt so proud. I was elated that I committed to something out of my comfort zone and actually followed through on it.
One of the things about the human psyche is that when we do something hard or overcome challenges, it cements itself (however small) into our minds that we’re the type of person that’s resilient. “I’m somebody who can endure hard things,” we think. Even though I haven’t run since the emotional grooves of that day are embedded in me. The pride and confidence carried over into other areas of my life.
Pursuing meaningful goals is an essential element of the formula for human happiness and one of the best ways to break out of the daily grind
Signing ourselves up for mini-challenges and following through give us a sense of meaning and achievement. It gives us something to focus on, to count down towards.
This can be something you sign up for and work towards, like a half-marathon, or it can be some sort of daily challenge. I personally love month-long challenges to jumpstart myself out of a funk. I’ve done:
Dry January
Write an article per day for 30-days
Read a book per week for a year
Workout and nutrition challenges
Calling a family member or friend every day for a month
All of which helped me break out of my routine and gave me the spark I needed to get unstuck.
Find something, anything, that gives you a moment of “Holy shit, I don’t want to do this.” and proceed to do it anyway. It may not change all your habits and routines forever, but it will leave its mark.
And who knows, maybe it’s the spark you needed to break out of the funk, shift your perspective, and get “unstuck” for good.