Have you ever gotten stuck? Are you stuck right now? How do you get unstuck? Well, getting unstuck is tough, but it's doable! In this cast, the ProductivityCast team discusses what gets us stuck and methods for getting unstuck.

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In this Cast

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Francis Wade

Art Gelwicks

Show Notes

Resources we mention, including links to them will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

What Designers of Task Management Apps Can Do to Catch Up with Pokemon Go by Francis Wade

50 Shades of Grey (if you didn’t get Augusto’s joke ? )

Getting Things Done by David Allen

OmniFocus 2

Todoist

Any.do

Habitica (f/k/a HabitRPG) (Let us know if you’d like to join Ray’s GTD Habitica Party!)

Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation

SuperBetter - Jane McGonigal, PhD (McGonigal’s TED talk)

Jerry Seinfeld / Don’t Break the Chain

Bullet Journal

Unstuck app

Tim Ferriss - “deconstruction of expert process”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSq9uGs_z0E

https://tim.blog/2016/10/06/the-art-and-science-of-learning-anything-faster/

Human Senses

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is h:mm:ss.ms to h:mm:ss.ms (e.g., 0:00:00.000,0:00:04.000 starts at 0.00 seconds and ends at 4 seconds in the cast's audio).

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are you ready to manage your work and

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personal world better to live a more

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fulfilling productive life then you've

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come to the right place

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welcome to productivity cast the weekly

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show about all things productivity here

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are your hosts Ray Sidney-Smith and

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Augusto Pinaud hello everybody and

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welcome back to another episode of

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productivitycast the weekly show about

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all things personal productivity today

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on the show we have Augusto Pinaud Art

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Gelwicks and Francis Wade welcome

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everybody how's it going good morning

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going great it's going great thanks a

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lot

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awesome so excited to have everybody on

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for this recording because we're talking

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about getting unstuck I wanted to I

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wanted to lead off with just what we all

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are thinking about when we talk about

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getting stuck in the first place and how

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and and what that means in the context

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of productivity art had come up with a

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really great suggestion which is that at

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the end of the episode

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we're each going to rapid-fire give some

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of our own sort of tactical techniques

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for our you know sort of our quick

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tactics for being able to get unstuck

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when we ourselves get stuck so we will

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close out the episode with that but

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let's let's start with just your

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thoughts on what is getting stuck and

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what is getting unstuck then as its

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inverse I've found myself stuck in a

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serious way when I moved back to Jamaica

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brahmam living in the US all of a sudden

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I was unproductive whereas I used to be

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productive I used to lead before I moved

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back I used to lead time management

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programs and I thought I had that stuff

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together and I moved into an environment

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that was way more hectic than I expected

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way more dramatic way less predictable

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people we less trustworthy in terms of

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what they could deliver and I was

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totally at sea it was totally

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disconcerting and I couldn't get

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anything done I went looking on the

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internet for answers and couldn't find

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anything I had way more to do because I

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was doing all people's jobs for them and

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I had no idea how to cook things were

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flying through the cracks and this is if

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I couldn't remember

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to do anything that I needed to do and

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for the people who have never read those

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post of presidents it has always been an

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internal joke or at least for me between

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Francis and I I from the outside instead

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enjoy reading those posts incredibly I

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was born and raised in Venezuela so I I

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went the other way I felt is when I was

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I learned productivity in a place where

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it was completely unpredictable we're

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getting to a meeting and the person who

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gives you the meeting decide not to show

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up and where predictability was almost

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non-existent so when I moved to the

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United States for me happen exactly the

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opposite it was like oh great

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so all these tools that I've been using

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for years now make sense and over the

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years they have evolved and change but I

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was always feeling more stock before I

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move here then then when I move and of

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course that change and I've been stuck

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and unstuck

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multiple times and actually just

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yesterday that this topic came you know

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pretty timely and we were privately

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joking via text messages because I was

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doing my with the review I noticed that

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I had 963 talk okay that is for me the

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definition of stock because the reality

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is there's no way for me to tackle 10%

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of that in a day so that means even if I

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have a really productive day is going to

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feel as if I did nothing and the

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question is what you do after you and I

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will I'll say that to the episode but

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that's a question I want to leave open

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today for me stuck is usually one of two

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things

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it's either I've got things pulling me

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in all different directions you get this

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mental image of an object with ropes

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tied to it pulling in all different

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directions and the object doesn't move

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because everything is pulling equally

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but in different directions but also the

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kind of the lack of

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knowing exactly what the next step will

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be to get me back on track for a

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particular thing and not knowing that

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often will push me into a direction for

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something else leaving me stuck on that

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particular item and it's easy to confuse

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stuck and procrastination I don't think

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that they're completely separate but I

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also don't think they're completely

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equal to one concede the other but I do

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want to take five seconds though here

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and I want to congratulate Francis's

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Jamaican soccer team on their incredible

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upset win last night in the Gold Cup so

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now that I'm done with that

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another nope said it was kind of

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expected I made a note here as we were

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preparing for the show and I wrote down

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procrastination because I think I'm

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pretty much on the same page here with

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art which is to say that I see being

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stuck in and being sort of a fork in the

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road and one is avoidance and the other

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is sort of lack of resources or

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limitation of resources of some kind

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whether it be mental physical time

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energy money whatever it might be the

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the reality is that that that sense of

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avoidance that lack of resources causes

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some kind of stymieing of your personal

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