Are You Stuck?

There are times when our mind gets frozen/stuck making us difficult to arrive at a decision. Some times when we are at the workplace and at times when we are at our home too. To get stuck or to experience indecisiveness is not very uncommon in our daily machine life.

Image Credit: Pixabay

We might find that we enter into a wishy-washy state in two kinds of scenarios.

1. When we reach a point where we don’t find any more solution for an issue.
2. When we have a lot of thoughts in mind but unable to act towards one.

Scenario – 1:

There is nothing in our world without a solution. The only thing what we need to do to tackle this scenario is to change the way we approach a problem in question.

My Experience With Scenario 1:

It was in the year 2011 and it was already past 11 PM. I was breaking my head at the work place while writing an ABAP logic as a part of my assignment. Though the program was written correctly, I was unable to get rid of the syntax error the system had thrown.

With most of the workstations empty, it was just my colleague-friend named Jeswanth Kadali and I in one of the conference room. My friend is a person who had started his career as an ABAP programmer.

Though it was just a cake walk for him to spot an issue in programs, that day the time was not in our favor. It was 11.30 PM already and we were unable to identify the reason for the error. My hopes drained, our eyes were dry and our minds were stuck with no alternatives.

With no options hitting our brain, I had pinged my onsite counterpart and explained the issue. He signed in into the system and confirmed that he sees a message “Syntax Check Successful” at the status bar of the SAP GUI. Awesome, we both sighed with a smile.

What Was The Issue?

None. We had looked at the issue in all major aspects. The only thing which we had missed is that we never tried to log out of the system and log in again. I am sure that most of the SAP consultants would have faced this scenario at least once in their career :).

A simple approach that we had overlooked, would have saved us time.

Scenario – 2:

The only thing needed to handle scenario 2 is a break. A human brain is a miracle. A medium that can make a person reach greater heights if utilized well. Giving our brain a break can be related to how we give rest to an electronic appliance or a machine after a long run by turning it off.

How To Unlock Ourselves When We Are Stuck?

Sitting idle will not help us to free up our brain. Do not wait.

Focus on to some simple tasks which we can complete in no time. The progression we had made in the new task will clear the mind.

The task you choose need not be specific to your work. It can be somewhat stupid too as I had mentioned below in this article.

Simple But Productive Tasks To Do When We Are Stuck:

• Move from your place, stretch yourself or walk.

– You can move around to refill the water bottle.

• Try Box Breathing technique to unlock your stuck mind.

– Navy Teams practice this technique to calm their nervous system and to remain stable at the time of stress.

• Look at someone who is highly involved in a task.

– We have got something called “Mirror Neurons” in our brain. When we see someone who is working hard, that activates the mirror neurons of our brain. These neurons in our brain make us feel as though we are doing that task.

Ever thought about the below mentioned?

Why do we cry when we see an emotional scene in a movie?

or

Why do we feel bad when we come across an accident on a road?

It is none other than the mirror neurons that play a role here.

• Clean your desk. If it’s already clean, clean the keyboard and the display of your laptop.

– Keyboards are the place where bacteria’s stays due to dirt accumulation.

• Turn off your cell phone and turn it on.

– We need to switch off and switch on our Android cell phones at least once in two days. Doing so would clear the cache files, in turn, saves memory and will respond faster.

• Move low priority emails to their respective folders in the mailbox.

– Execute the email rules you had set.

• Watch that favorite clip that motivates you or makes you smile.

• Listen to one good song that makes you forget every thing for few minutes.

• Clean up or move unwanted old files and documents from the home screen of your computer to a folder.

– Having our files and documents organized well save us time when there is a need.

The Funny Act:

Below is one of the stupid/funny things that we can do to unlock our brain.

If you have a close friend/colleague nearby, press the seat lever of their chair. Do this with caution and only to your close friends.

– It creates laughter around you. Bring smiles on your friends face.

To bring a smile on others face is a great thing.

The above mentioned are not the only simple things we have got. Every individual will have their own interest making the options more dynamic. Do share these techniques with your friends and colleagues when you find them stuck.

If you have got some other approaches to unlock minds, feel free to share those in the comments section. Your approach might help many people who read this post.

References:

httpss://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2773693/

httpss://gearpatrol.com/2017/02/02/box-breathing-navy-seals/