There’s a particular kind of stuck that doesn’t respond to trying harder.

You stay at your desk longer than you meant to. You reopen the same document, reread the same paragraph, adjust a word that wasn’t really the problem. You make coffee out of habit, not because you want it, and tell yourself – again – that if you just give it a little more focus, it’ll click.

Maybe it’s a page you’ve rewritten too many times. A decision you keep postponing because none of the options feel right. A plan that makes sense in theory but refuses to come together once you try to build it.

It doesn’t. 

The work isn’t gone. You can feel it hovering just beyond reach, like something you know how to explain until the moment you try to explain it. You loop back to the same idea, sensing there’s a way through, but every attempt lands slightly off. Close, but not usable. 

It’s the kind of frustration that builds slowly. Not dramatic enough to justify stopping, not productive enough to feel like progress. You’re doing the work, technically – sitting there, trying – and that’s what makes it so aggravating.

You’re not avoiding it.

You’re right there with it, watching time pass.

When this happens, most of us assume the answer is more effort – more thinking, more pressure, applied with better discipline. But this kind of stuck almost never responds to force – because working harder is the exact thing that’s keeping you stuck.

That’s the answer we’ve been taught to trust.

Focus more. Try again. Tighten things up. Put your head down and push through – because there are plenty of moments when that approach genuinely works. Deadlines get met. Problems resolve. Things click after a little extra effort.

So when something won’t move, it’s natural to reach for the same tools. 

And sometimes they work.

But when they don’t – when you’ve already tried harder and all it’s done is deepen the stall – the experience starts to shift. Because now it’s not just the work that’s resisting you, it’s your confidence.

You start paying closer attention to the friction. Wondering why this feels harder than it should. Questioning whether you’ve lost your edge, your clarity, your ability to make something come together when it matters.

Nothing dramatic. Just a subtle erosion of trust in yourself.

That’s the moment most people miss.

Because it happens underneath all the efforting. While you’re still showing up. Still trying. Still doing everything you’re supposed to do.

And once that doubt creeps in, pushing harder doesn’t just stop helping.

It starts working against you.

So you swing in the opposite direction. You decide to step away for a while. To disengage. Tell yourself you probably just need distance – as if walking far enough from the problem will somehow reset it.

And then that doesn’t work either. 

Because pressure isn’t the answer. Pushing harder or removing it altogether are two sides of the same coin.

Up to this point, almost everything you’ve tried has lived in the same place. Thinking it through. Reworking the logic. Asking the analytical part of your brain to solve something it’s already been grinding on.

That’s not a failure of discipline.

It’s a mismatch of approach.

Some problems don’t move when you lean into them. They move when you step out of the mental loop entirely – not to disengage, but to shift where your attention is working.

For me, that place ended up being the kitchen – though not in the way people usually mean it.

I didn’t drift there looking for calm or comfort. I was pushed there by circumstance. My allergies stopped being manageable and started being a real problem, and suddenly most of the easy options disappeared. Eating out was complicated. Packaged food was risky. Convenience came with hefty consequences.

For a while, I resented that. I wallowed in it, honestly. Cooking wasn’t a skill I had, and it wasn’t one I felt particularly drawn to. Food, for most of my life, was something you heated, not something you made. If it required more than that, I called my mom.

Every time.

But at some point, I made myself a promise: if I was going to have to cook, I would only eat food I actually loved. No bland substitutions. No joyless “good enough” meals. I would figure out how to make things I wanted to eat – or I wouldn’t eat them at all.

That decision changed the kitchen completely.

Because cooking didn’t ask less of me – it asked more. Attention. Patience. Problem-solving. Timing. Taste. Judgment. Cooking asked for creativity I didn’t feel ready to give – and it asked for it anyway.

I started watching Food Network obsessively, not because I suddenly wanted to become a chef, but because I needed to understand what was even happening. I followed recipes exactly. Measured everything. Googled substitutions. And stopped halfway through more than once to figure out what I’d missed.

Things went wrong. A lot. Food got burned. Flavors were off. Meals were… edible, technically, but not what I’d imagined. I moved slowly. Carefully. Like someone who didn’t yet trust their instincts.

And still, I kept cooking.

Over time, something shifted – not all at once, and not in a way I could point to while it was happening. I stopped reading every line three times. I began to recognize what needed more salt before tasting it. I learned how long something could sit before it crossed the line from done to ruined.

Eventually, I stopped cooking from recipes and started cooking toward something. A flavor. A feeling. An idea of how I wanted the plate to come together. 

That was new.

Not the mechanics – the creativity. The part of me that could imagine how something might taste before it existed, then adjust until it did. I didn’t name it. I didn’t analyze it. It just lived there, in the kitchen.

Cooking was cooking.
Work was work.

Until the day I was too frustrated, too tired, and too hungry to keep forcing something that wasn’t moving.

I wasn’t looking for a lesson or a metaphor or a way back into my work. I’d been pushing myself the way I always did – trying to force something to come together long after it should have. 

I got up from my desk not because I’d figured something out – but because I was starving.

I went into the kitchen out of irritation more than intention. Made something to eat because my body demanded it, not because I was being thoughtful or reflective. I sat down, took a bite – 

And it was really, really good.

That pulled me up short.

Not that long ago, I had to call my mom to ask how to hard-boil an egg. I stood at the stove with the phone tucked between my shoulder and my ear, afraid of messing up something that felt absurdly basic. 

And now here I was, eating something I’d invented. I hadn’t followed a recipe or measured anything. 

I hadn’t thought my way into confidence or creativity.
I’d cooked my way into it.

What landed wasn’t a solution – it was recognition.

I didn’t need to push harder. I needed to discover something. I could do that – I had done that. 

The problems on my desk weren’t magically solved, but the self doubt that had crept in lost its grip.

The creativity I thought I’d somehow lost wasn’t gone. Being in the kitchen unintentionally gave it somewhere else to go for a while – somewhere it could move freely, without being forced. 

So I kept doing it.

That’s the part that mattered.

Not the kitchen. Not the food. The shift.

When pushing stopped working, I stopped pushing there. I let creativity live somewhere else for a while – somewhere it wasn’t being judged, measured, or asked to perform.

That’s the reset.

It doesn’t have to look impressive.
It doesn’t have to be useful.
It doesn’t even have to be good.

Dance in the living room. Burn a few pancakes. Sing in the car. Make a mess. Try something you’re bad at on purpose.

The point isn’t mastery.
It’s movement.

When creativity has room to move without constraint, it doesn’t disappear from the work you’re stuck in – it just stops being trapped there.

And when you come back, you’re not forcing something dead to move.

You’re returning with something alive.