I’ve watched four YouTube videos, done a load of laundry, and scored some amazing deals online, getting ready to write this post. Or I might say, avoiding writing this post.
So, I put it off for longer than necessary. The idea was formed and the cartoon got drawn weeks ago, but for writing, I felt too restless to sit, and too uncomfortable confronting this very issue that so many creative people face every single day.
These days, it can be really tempting to use AI to just skip not so much the work but the creative heebie-jeebies, the acute discomfort and restlessness, the overwhelming reluctance to just… start already.
Now, I’ll be honest and say I will happily—even gleefully—offload impossibly tedious or repetitive admin work like writing proposals and “just-the-facts-ma’am” emails to my committees to my bestie Claude. Those tasks neither require nor deserve anything special or specific to me, which is probably the main reason why I find them so crushingly boring.
But when it comes to anything remotely creative or expressive, I know in my bones that the easy, beguiling off-ramp AI offers is so dangerous. Not just because I imagine all our brains becoming atrophied and melting to goo from lack of use, but because ignoring and bypassing this discomfort is like running a 5K on a broken ankle because you found some really good painkillers, or relying on a bottle of vodka every time you need to step on a stage.
This Means War
In his excellent book The War of Art, novelist and screenwriter Stephen Pressfield calls it Resistance. Note the capital R, because in his framing, it’s not just a condition or a feeling; it’s a living entity and an enemy, practically tangible and real enough to merit a proper name.
He talks about doing battle with Resistance every day, right down to his mud-and-blood combat descriptions. (I told you it was painful!)
But while being a fearsome adversary, Resistance can also be a dependable sign that you, as a human and not a robot, actually care about what you’re avoiding working on.
And the more the work matters, says Pressfield, the tougher and sneakier Resistance gets.
AI, conveniently, never has writer’s block. You can ask it to do something you’d have avoided for days or weeks, and taken almost as long to complete (conjure up a description of your ideal client, create your business plan, write a poem, a song, or a piece like this one) and have a serviceable draft in about 20 seconds.
You might think that’s because it has all the thoughts and information ever generated at its instantaneous disposal, and you’d be right. But only partly.
Claude’s biggest edge over me when it comes to licking Resistance is that he (she?) is not me. Claude doesn’t care what others think, or wonder if deep down he has anything worthwhile to impart to anyone. He’s not picking apart the wash technique on his latest cartoon, or looking for ways to express what’s in his heart. He’s not trying to connect.
Only you and I can do that. And we must.
So how might we do battle with Resistance, and win? Fortunately, science offers some clues.
Deconstructing and Foiling Resistance
Ahmed and Güss’s 2022 study of writer’s block showed it wasn’t just one thing. The researchers who studied 146 writers found blocking rarely comes down to laziness; it’s most often driven by stress, fear of judgment, or simple exhaustion.
Of the solutions the subjects found, one was simply white-knuckling and forcing themselves to write anyway, while gentler approaches that helped most included talking over their ideas with others, switching to a different writing project, or just taking a break.
For me, just the idea that Resistance is proof I’m a human who cares, not an insurmountable barrier, a character flaw, or reason to quit gives me a reframe that helps me get started and stick with it. Then I find it almost as hard to stop.
And it’s not just me: Alice Flaherty, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and author of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain, frames writer’s block and its opposite (compulsive, uncontrollable writing, aka hypergraphia) as two sides of one brain-level phenomenon.
Seeing Resistance (and hypergraphia, its mirror-image) as a physiological event in the brain, rather than something to reproach ourselves for, gives us options that the usual self-help, productivity, and willpower advice can’t. Instead of staring at the blank page, questioning your self-worth and further roiling your stress hormones, you can trick your brain into a calmer, more creative flow by switching to a lower-stakes task like freewriting, or rejiggering your dopamine levels with even small changes in light or movement.
Don’t Let the Creator and the Critic Share an Office
Also, no matter what the activity, I have to keep reminding myself: it’s important to separate the purely creative function from the critical, or editing, mode. Trying to edit as you write may seem efficient but it only encourages the kind of perfectionism that has you second-guessing yourself every other word or brushstroke.
That’s why, in innovation sessions, we alternate between the divergent (idea generation) and convergent (narrowing down the ideas) and don’t try to do both at once, like hitting the accelerator and brake at the same time.
Not only is mixing these two functions counterproductive, but it makes creative work a lot less fun. (As if we needed yet another reason to avoid doing it!)
So if you’re feeling stuck, blocked, or like doing laundry right now is of utmost importance instead of creating something that matters, congratulations! You are a human being. Instead of wishing that away, learn to do battle with it, as Stephen Pressfield says. Or better yet, make friends with it.
