# Creative Block I am using the term 'creative block' rather than writer's block because I think the concept can be applied more broadly. It is the feeling that you are struggling or unable to express thoughts or ideas through a medium. This could be through writing, painting, playing music, writing code, or dance. You have a level of performance that you want to achieve, something you want to be proud of but don't know exactly how you will achieve it. You then become afraid that you won't be able to achieve. You psyche yourself out. I have had a few creative blocks. I got it once while writing a larger piece of research. I had just done a high quality report, and had ideas on how I could improve quality even more. I wanted it to sound, read and look a certain way. I wanted it to be rigorous, logical and coherent. I created an enormous amount of work in my head. I started on it but eventually saw so many obstacles in the way to achieving it. I have also had this while working on a difficult project analyzing an extremely large set of price data. I ran into a number of problems, both technical (with the library and hardware I was using) and conceptual/mathematical. I had grandiose plans for this project but felt deflated because there seemed to be more obstacles in the way to finishing it than I had expected. From my experience creative block is essentially: 1. Becoming deflated because your expectations were too optimistic and had to be reset; 2. With new obstacles in the way, becoming anxious about meeting the level of performance you previously set for yourself. So creative block is essentially performance anxiety with a gut punch. In my examples I initially started out strong, encountered some issues, and then lost confidence in my ability to reach my own high standards. No one asked this of me! They were set from within. That's why some people recommend lowering your standards. If you tell yourself: "this is just for me" or "let's just see what happens if i do this" then its easier to get started. In the case of the data analysis project I eventually got myself to do some work, after months of putting it off. I told myself that I needed to do something, even if it was just fiddling with the code. I just tried to fix a few of the small issues. Well that worked. I was building momentum again and made some more progress. I don't think we should set our long-term standards lower though. Lowering standards should be a short term tactic. Keep your long term goals in tact, but when it comes to the short term steps: Just do it. Work on it a little at a time. Understand that things will go wrong, and adjust your expectations. Only lower your standards in the short term. ## Related - [[Getting Motivated]]