Getting Unstuck
You probably clicked on this blog for one of two reasons: either you have found yourself in a bit of a slump, or you're my mother and read all my blogs (HI MOM!). And if it’s the former I hope throughout this you find something that helps you feel more at ease.
Survival Mode
I have a tattoo that’s a song lyric from a very quirky woman named Regina Spektor that says “I got a perfect body because my eyelashes catch my sweat”. And one of the many things it reminds me of is that my body and mind do a lot to protect me and move me through my life. I get tired at the end of a long day and go to sleep to recover to take on another one. I get thirsty when I’m dehydrated to prompt me to get some life juice to keep all the important bits going. And I think part of that is, I get stuck sometimes. I have reframed my perspective on getting stuck that maybe it’s a good thing. It can be easy to see all of the spectacular content being put out by the community and want to create at a near constant rate. And it’s easy to be frustrated with ourselves when we have the desire to make something and all we can find in our brain is that car stall noise. But I invite people to take a step back and think about why that might be. Maybe you’ve been pushing yourself hard lately. Maybe you have had things going on at work or at home taking up the extra mental space and that’s all you have to give right now. And that’s okay. Before I get into my tips on how to get unstuck I wanted to remind everyone that you’re not supposed to be putting out something all the time and it’s okay to take a beat and reset and that being stuck might just be something inside you doing you a favor.
Lower Your Standards and Up Your Discipline
Be ready to turn your head to the side like a confused puppy because I’m about to tell you to be nicer to yourself AND harder on yourself in this one paragraph. I find that a big part of that “stuck” is not the lack of motivation or inspiration that everyone categorizes it as but in fact, self doubt. I put out the above graphic (originally in a tweet in December of 2020) a while back and I stand by it. When you think about the root of your stuckness, is it that you don’t know what to make or that you’re worried you won’t be able to do what you want to make justice? Or maybe it’s that you already made something or several somethings and talked yourself into shelving it because it wasn’t going exactly the way that you wanted it to. You’re never going to reach a bar you’re always raising. And while it’s good to strive for better or more, sometimes just doing the thing is enough. So pursue your ideas no matter how daunting or silly, be kind to your work because it’s the product of someone who earnestly tried to make something. And then just put it out. Set a deadline. I’ll tell you a secret, the only person who knows it’s not exactly the way you wanted it to be is you. Release it into the wild. You never know, it might even get better that way. I read a quote the other week that said something to the effect of, you’ll either suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. And I think that applies here. You’ll be hard on yourself whether or not you put it out so just put it out.
If You Must
But maybe you’re not even that far. I don’t know a lot about science but I do honestly feel at times it’s possible that a tumbleweed blows across my brain. And if you’ve felt that way too you might just need to be pointed in the right direction. I made the below guide earlier this year (originally shared on Twitter in April) to talk about the different kinds of stuck and how you can lean on community resources to be the wind beneath your wings.
Level One Block: Getting off the ground
This is when you simply can’t pinpoint a place to start. For this I recommend a challenge where they give you the idea. Sometimes all you need is to be narrowed in some. Below are a few challenges where they set a theme that might be just enough parameters to put some gas in your tank.
Level Two Block: Picking something
I call this the Cheesecake Factory problem (I don’t but I’m gonna start). Whenever I go to the Cheesecake Factory I slip into a near panic because the menu is so big that I don’t know what to pick. And if you’re coming out of a rut, challenges like the ones referenced in the Level One Block might not be enough because it still introduces too much space to need to pick something. If that’s the case, I recommend challenges that narrow it in even further by having a more hyperfocused theme or sharing a specific data set to tailor your viz around.
Level Three Block: I’ve got nothing
This is where it really is tumbleweeds. And if you’re here I recommend reading the first section again. But if you really want to make something, there are a handful of challenges that are more explicit about what to make and take the guesswork out of it. I especially want to highlight Back 2 Viz Basics because though it can seem like a challenge for people who are earlier on in their viz journey, I think it’s a great opportunity for more practiced developers to revisit the foundations of data viz and get creative.
Note: also keep in mind, even if the most recent round for a specific challenge doesn’t call to you, you can always utilize something from the past. Some of these challenges have been around for YEARS so there’s a lot of history to pull from.
I hope you’re either walking away from this blog (metaphorically, I know you’re going to be sitting at your computer for several more hours) with the tools to dislodge yourself from the stuckness or with the empathy to let yourself sit for a while. Can’t wait to see what you make, whenever you’re ready.
