What's Your Problem?
The subtle art of knowing what is REALLY wrong
Welcome to “All the Tasks Fit to Print,” my weekly newsletter on all issues productivity related for authors and other solopreneurs!
I was talking to a couple of friends earlier this week and we got on the subject of floundering with a project or schedule. We all know that feeling: frustration with the lack of progress to the point of wanting to give up. Sometimes, we do give up; sometimes, we can't.
It feels awful, and being in the midst of those chaotic emotions can prevent us from seeing the heart of the problem. We all know someone who is always starting new hobbies, new businesses, and new activities but then abandoning them, claiming they were unfulfilling or too difficult.
What they are really failing to do is understand the nature of their resistance: were they struggling, or were they being challenged?
In general use, those terms are synonymous, but I'm a project manager so I consider it important to understand why they are not actually the same…
What is the difference between struggling and being challenged?
A challenge is something that takes you out of your comfort zone, requiring extra effort, time, and energy to accomplish or make progress toward your goal. The battle with resistance is an internal hurdle, something you have to overcome with mindset and determination.
A struggle is when something is going wrong and impacting your ability to be successful. Your mindset might be in the right place but the core issues is an external problem that needs to identified and resolved.
In both cases, it can feel overwhelming to deal with and can lead to you giving up completely. In both cases, there are external and internal aspects that can lead to defeat.
But also in both cases, if you can figure out if you are facing a challenge or a struggle, you can approach those feelings with solutions in hand. Sure, it's easy to just give up when something gets hard, but unless you want to be that person perpetually cycling through unfinished projects, it's worth your time to figure out what is trapping you in place.
That said, it's not always easy to tell the difference.
Being Objective About It
I ran into this issue when I was writing a book years ago. It was a romantic suspense novel with a complex plot and multiple character arcs, so I had expected it to tax my skillset. Writing a novel is always a challenge, don't get me wrong. It's a combination of stamina, creativity, focus, and planning that doesn't always go the way we expect it to, or in this case, go at all. I was stalled.
Writing the story had gotten hard, to the point where I would just sit and stare at the screen for hours. I was beginning to feel like it might be time to bin the whole thing even though I had nearly 50,000 words committed to it. The plot had simply fallen apart, and I felt like I was trying to rig things together with twisty wires and gum. Objectively, I could have just had my main leads kiss and then cut to a wedding scene, but that felt forced. Something was wrong but I was uncertain if it was the story or if it was me.
Was it challenge? Yes. Was it a struggle? Also yes. But only one of those things was the actual problem.
Maybe it's just how my brain works, or my experience managing projects, but I knew that I needed to figure out whether I was overwhelmed by the challenge (which I could counter with a bit of grit and determination) or if I was feeling defeated by the struggle (which would require me analyzing the project to identify the error and then find a way to fix it).
So I did what is always the best thing to do in this situation: I took a break.
Honestly, stepping away from a project that is aggravating you is 99.9% of the time the right move.
Here is the fancy project management jargon for doing that: STOP!
That's it. Just stop whatever is in progress.
While pulling the lever to completely halt a project is rarely done, stopping is common because it is more important to make the trade off in time and budget in order to nip early problems in the bud, as opposed to letting them go on to compound in scope and effect until everything is higgledy-piggledy (another super-technical bit of jargon, I swear!).
Call it a "pause" if that feels less final to you, but whatever do you, make sure it's not the thing you have been doing!
When I stopped and stepped away for a short time, I was able to return to the novel-in-progress with objective eyes. I realized quickly that I was struggling.
Why? Because I killed off the villain in a (very suitably dramatic!) scene. Since it was when I had planned to kill him off, I had not clocked it as a problem. But putting the villain arc against the love-story arc I realized that they did not match up at all! I needed the villain to continue to cause conflict with the couple, as they still had their own fears and reluctance to overcome. If they had a reason to continue to join forces, they would be compelled to resolve the issues in their budding romance. What I had been trying to do previously was shove them together without the intense emotional connection that would form if the villain was still in the story.
In the end, not killing the villain when I had originally planned created a whole new arc that expanded the story, which ended up topping out at over 90,000 words. This time, the villain did not die until the next-to-last chapter. The important lesson to recognize here is that once I realized that I was struggling, and identified the external issue that was causing the struggle, I sat down with a plot outline and related character arcs and finished the novel within a few months.
Five Steps to Solution
Whatever project is hanging over your head is probably also a mix of challenge and struggle, but only one of those is actually the problem.
In the case of people who repeatedly stall and abandon projects that challenge them, the issue to solve is internal, and probably stems from things like perfectionism or insecurity or even anxiety and trauma.
If you usually can push through discomfort and difficulty to hit your goals but find yourself lethargic or annoyed at yourself for your lack of progress, then you are probably in the midst of a struggle.
If you are not sure where you're at or how to continue with your plans, then follow these five simple steps:
Stop: Put the project on pause if at all possible, or at least into its slowest gear.
Retreat: Step away from the aggravation. Have some tea! Enjoy the sunset! Play with your pet!
Regroup: Return to the project with a fresh perspective and some objectivity.
Identify: Is it a challenge or a struggle?
Resolve: Attack the problem you've now identified with a solid solution.
Remember that one truth of project management is that the problems never end until the project is closed, so chances are, you might have to go through that process more than once. It's an important part of the "monitoring" stage of any project though, and if you do it whenever you feel like you are slogging through the quagmire, you will (eventually!) get to DONE!
It's hard for me to admit when something is an actual struggle rather than a challenge, but when I do force myself to step away for a bit and come back with fresh eyes, it's always worth it.