Overcome listlessness - When you have lost your routine

Sometimes you want to be productive, but you can't do it with the best will in the world. I'm not talking about being productive for productivity's sake. It's perfectly okay not to be productive sometimes. But in some cases, a fundamental powerlessness creeps in, which becomes apparent when you try to get back to action. Even if you really want to work on something, you can't do it in this state. That's how I feel at the moment.

After Lukas and I have written three extensive books on philosophy in the last two years (the third part of the series will be published shortly) and I have also published three more books in the last two years while running the blog and also working our day jobs, I reached a point where I was running out of steam. So it was time to take a breather - something we usually don't do enough of and was therefore particularly important to me after such a productive creative phase. 

Now, of course, I could tell you how you would expect an author of philosophy and self-help books not to get unnecessarily angry about this. The truth is, however, that I have been frustrated time and again recently with my difficulties in finding my drive again. But that's also completely fine from a philosophical and psychological point of view. If this emotional state occurs, then you should also accept it. Alan Watts often pointed out that in Far Eastern philosophies, the acceptance of emotions is very important and this has also been communicated in psychology for a long time. This is particularly important in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT).

So here I am. A little dissatisfied, but at peace with it. Unfortunately, that doesn't solve my underlying problem; how do I get back to my productive phase? After trying for a while to continue working on new book projects, with some but rather moderate success, I've ended up here with this article, which - short as it may be - I'm enjoying. The trick in this case was actually quite simple:

I took some time to feel into what was currently bothering me and used this closeness to the topic to overcome my block - in this case, ironically, I solved the problem with the problem, because even though tomorrow is Monday and my day job is calling, I'm still happy to spend some time writing somewhere.

Perhaps this approach can also help you when you can't bring yourself to be productive, even though you want to be.