Take the break

You have something to finish. A form, a letter, a job you promised someone. You sit down to do it and nothing happens. You read the same line four times. You get up for tea, come back, and nothing has changed.

Some people call it low energy. Some call it writer's block. Some call it laziness, usually about themselves.

Before you call it anything, notice what you are actually thinking about. Is it a hot bath? A short nap? A brisk walk? Maybe all you really want is two minutes of quiet with your eyes closed, or ten minutes of loud music and dancing round the kitchen.

When that happens, your mind is lined up with something else. It is pointed at the thing you would rather be doing, and the task is sitting off to one side, waiting.

Do the other thing

Feng shui is the study of how energy moves around us, and most of it comes down to placement and alignment: putting things where the energy works best. Thoughts can be looked at the same way. Forcing your mind back to the task while it wants to be somewhere else is said to make the energy scattered, pushy and stuck all at once. Anyone who has tried it knows the feeling.

So stop. Have the bath. Take the walk. Do the thing your mind is already doing.

Then come back to the task. You come back with your energy in the present again, and the work tends to move far more easily than it did when you were fighting it.

Notice the thought. Give it what it wants. Then begin again.

From the archive. First written for my journal years ago, and rewritten for life after 50.