Task Rotation: Finding Your Work Flow in a Rut

Burnout Prevention

Nov 3

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Feeling like you’re stuck in a rut?

The thing about being in a creative rut is that you don’t realize you’re stuck until it’s too late. And some people have a hard time figuring out how to find their creative flow again, but not you because you’re subscribed to Her Messy Bun podcast and Blog and today I’m sharing my quickest way to get find your creative flow when you’re stuck in a rut.

Find Your Flow State With Task Rotation

“What’s something you’ve been ignoring because the idea of starting is paralyzing?”

This was today’s Morning Page’s prompt and it’s been a question I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. As someone who was late diagnosed with ADHD, one of the things I never knew how to explain to people was that I wasn’t lazy - I was stuck, but I wasn’t stuck in a confused way, I was frozen in time, glued to the spot I was in, physically unable to move to go do the thing that was causing me to stay where I was. Unmoving. Only to constantly think about how I’m so lazy, why can’t I just get up and go shower, or why can’t I just get up and start that project?

Now I know it’s because I have ADHD, which can lead to task paralysis. Which can feel like you’re in a rut, you’re lazy or like you don’t care about it, when in reality that’s just not true.

This got me thinking about how I work. How do I actually create hype around doing the project? How do I actually build motivation to just start.

The starting part feels unhinged and unattainable and things like messy action and body doubling don’t work when you’re experiencing ADHD paralysis because you still have to find the courage to start that project that you’ve been ignoring. So what do you do?

Have you tried Task Rotation?

What is Task Rotation?

Task Rotation is when you rotate between multiple different tasks that have similar aspects of what you’re trying to do, but they don’t hold the pressure of needing to do it.

Identify the project or task you’re ignoring
Create a list of alternative tasks
Start on of the alternative tasks and see how that makes you feel
If you don’t find motivation, move on to the next task
Keep rotating between tasks until you find momentum
If you end up finishing the alternative tasks before switching the original idea, use the content and creative flow you created and see how it can help you kickstart the project
Breakdown the project into smaller tasks that you can use for your next task rotation session

So imagine if the project that you’ve been avoiding is to create and record a new course for your business. The goal isn’t to start start that project, the goal is to start a similar pressure free task that can create momentum or hype for you to move on to that project. Similar tasks could look like:

recording a TikTok about the course you’re creating
writing a blog post about the topic
listening to a podcast episode about the topic
grabbing a journal and writing about the topic

As I mentioned, the goal isn’t to actually start and finish these alternative tasks, its to find motivation. However if you don’t find motivation, the benefit is that you now have some content and projects done around the one specific project you’re too paralyzed to start.

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