Sometimes, when you find yourself somehow unable to do a thing you need or want to do, one issue might be that your brain has subconsciously tacked on extra tasks, and those tasks are making the whole thing too overwhelming!

Tl;dr: don't do that!

For example, I like to track the books I read and I've been meaning to add a few books I've recently finished. But my brain has added that I should also write a review, and the exact dates I read them (which I can't even remember) and oh by the way I should finish moving my stuff over to storygraph and before I know it that 1 task has turned into 4! And my executive functioning says no.

In fact, while I was getting the idea to write this post, my brain went "wouldn't it be nice to also write a post about y and tag them all properly and go back through my posts and find all mental health posts and tag those too" and wouldn't you know it. 4 tasks.

Discard those extra tasks. Don't even write them down. They don't matter. Strip it down to the 1 task you started with and only do that.

Sure, you won't have achieved some theoretical better end result but that end result was never gonna happen anyway. It was paralysing you from getting the initial task done. And maybe once that initial task is done, you can get to one (1! not 4!) additional task. Later. Not now.

moss light; kings river, california