Feeling Stuck: The First Thing You Need Is Traction

The Four Phases of Getting from Here to There

Nov 28, 2023

I’ve felt stuck before, and this is the advice I wish I’d been given to help me through those times. I’ve felt stuck in my career, personal finances, health and fitness, and personal relationships. It sucks to feel stuck, but I’ve found a framework that helps me to get unstuck and headed where I want to be instead.

The key has been learning to ignore (at first) most of the advice I found in business books and personal-growth content during my 20s.

When I’m feeling stuck in a frustrating or unsatisfying circumstance, I don’t need to start with "Why" or begin with the end in mind. That’s great advice for most situations, but when I’m feeling stuck, I don’t need a grand plan for getting where I want to go.

I don’t even need to know where exactly I want to go. There’s only one thing I need, when I’m feeling stuck.

I need traction.

A wide cinematic frame showing a woman in her mid-30s, appearing distressed and overwhelmed, standing near a small, ill-equipped car slowly spinning out of control on a snowy road. The heavy snowfall and vast, snow-covered landscape around her emphasize her struggles and the harsh environment. The image captures the essence of a pivotal, challenging moment in a theatrical film.

Until I have traction, nothing else really matters. And trying to plot a course, when I can’t even control if or where I’m moving, is a distraction (we could pronounce it as “dis-traction” in this case) at best. At worst, it’s demoralizing and unmotivating.

The Four Phases

After managing to get unstuck in various aspects of my life over the last decade, I’ve started to identify an implicit framework — the four phases that have gotten me unstuck and onto a path to where I’d rather be. And it always starts with traction.

When I start to feel stuck, the four phases of getting myself from here to there are these:

Traction
Target
Trajectory
Time

I’ll explain them all, and perhaps the last three will sound like familiar or common-sense advice. But those phases can’t help you when you’re truly feeling stuck, because being stuck is as much a psychological state as a practical one.

When I’m feeling stuck, I’ve become insecure and unmotivated. You only really feel stuck once you’ve tried to improve things, to no avail. Until you regain your sense of traction, you can’t sustain the confidence and motivation it will take to execute on a plan. And having a grand plan will only serve to highlight your lack of traction.

So, I’ll explain all four phases, but I’ll start where I always start when I start to feel stuck.

1. TRACTION

If your car tires are spinning in the snow, that’s the only thing to worry about. Maybe you need to replace your tires or buy some snow-chains or trade in your car for a 4-wheel drive vehicle. But however you manage to do it, your singular focus must be finding a way to get traction. You’re not going anywhere until you have it.

When you don’t have traction in some aspect of your life, it feels like playing a video game with a faulty controller — one that has a drift in the thumb-stick and an A-button that sticks. If you’re playing a video game with a malfunctioning controller, advice for how to play the game is useless and frustrating. The only advice you need is to repair or replace the controller.

Image of a red, 4-wheel-drive vehicle equipped with snow-chains on its tires, skillfully navigating through a parking lot blanketed in snow and ice. The environment is a wintry scene, with the ground covered in a thick layer of snow and patches of ice visible, highlighting the challenging driving conditions. The vehicle is portrayed in motion, demonstrating effective adaptation and problem-solving in difficult winter weather.

What traction looks like when I’m feeling stuck has varied based on the context. As with most things, it depends. But here are some examples:

30 minutes per day for 4–5 days per week spent learning Javascript gave me traction in my career, when I found myself managing a product aimed at developers.
Paying off debts from smallest balance to largest balance was what gave me a sense of traction in my personal finances, when it felt like I couldn’t make progress.
Doing a 4-minute routine of bodyweight exercises every morning gave me traction, when I felt stuck in a poor state of physical fitness.

What all of these have in common, though it may not be obvious when reading the list, was how small these efforts were and how modest the progress was. I learned Javascript (you still don’t want to deploy any code I’ve written to Production though!) in relatively short bursts a few days a week for about 6 months. I paid off my smallest debt (a $500 balance, out of almost $300K in total debts) within the first month of really trying. And my 4-minute exercise routine took approximately — and you’re not gonna believe this — 4 minutes each morning.

Traction can start very small, because it compounds. It unlocks confidence and motivation, which leads me toward larger and more strategic moves. When I start to see that I can make intentional progress in the area where I felt stuck, I no longer feel stuck. Even if the progress is tiny, it’s progress. I attempted to make some specific progress, and then I actually made that progress. I’ve found something that’s working, which reignites my belief that I’m capable of more progress.

When I’m feeling stuck, my only objective is to get some traction — any traction at all — and then build on that.

2. TARGET

Once I have gained a sense of traction, proving to myself that I’ve managed to intentionally move in a direction, then it’s time to start thinking about setting a target. If I can make intentional progress in a direction of my choosing, it’s now great advice to start with “Why” and begin with the end in mind. Coupled with my sense of traction (i.e. earned confidence), identifying a destination I’m excited to get to will be even more motivating.

Image of a three-dimensional, stylized map, with a small, red, 4-wheel-drive vehicle similar to a 2021 Toyota Sequoia on the left side. The map shows a route indicated by a red winding line traversing varied terrain, including mountains and forests, leading to a large red pin with concentric circles, resembling a target, on the right side. The target pin symbolizes the vehicle's destination. The map has a textured, realistic topography with a blue river, brown mountains, and green trees, adding depth to the scene set against a light blue grid background.

I think most folks would put Target (or Vision, Objective, Plan, Goal, etc.) first in the list, but I don’t agree. Until I’ve won a sense of traction in a given domain, it’s unhelpful to think about where I’m trying to go. It only serves to demoralize me for my lack of progress. But once I can demonstrate to myself that I can intentionally create even modest movement in a direction of my choosing, it is useful and productive to pick a destination I want to aim for.

In physical fitness, perhaps it’s to squat a certain amount of weight in the gym or finish a half marathon. In personal finances, perhaps it’s to buy a house or have a certain net worth by some future date. Professionally, perhaps it’s to work at a specific company (or found a company), earn a certain income, work on a certain kind of product, or achieve some level of leadership. If the target is a very long-term one, I’ll probably break it down into milestones I can track toward. I’ll outline a plausible plan to get there.

Once traction is gained, setting a target gives direction. It's expected that plans evolve and targets shift as life unfolds. As long as I still have traction, I’m free to choose a different target and plot a new course, whenever I decide that’s the best fit for me.

3. TRAJECTORY

Once I have traction and set a target, I begin to monitor my trajectory toward that target. I can plot my annual income on a graph to see how fast it’s growing. I can track how many push-ups I do each day, to make sure the number is increasing as the weeks pass. Or I can create a monthly calendar appointment with myself to evaluate my recent progress and gut-check how I feel about my pace of progress, based on more qualitative measures.

Image of a stylized 3D bar graph with an upward trending red arrow, on which a small, red, 4-wheel-drive vehicle styled like a 2021 Toyota Sequoia is placed. The vehicle sits on a solid red portion of the trend line that represents past growth, while ahead of the vehicle, the line extends to an upward-pointing arrow, indicating future projections. The graph is overlaid on a beige background, with a pen at the bottom right corner for scale.

Monitoring my trajectory helps me decide if I need to make adjustments in my day-to-day — seeking out advice, learning new skills, focusing effort on certain activities, meeting specific kinds of people, working or practicing more hours per week, looking for a different job, working on side projects, etc.

How quantitative I am about monitoring trajectory depends on the area of my life I’m concerned with and how quantifiable my target is. Financial targets are pretty easy to quantify and so is the trajectory toward the target. Learning a musical instrument is less so, but perhaps I’d count the number of songs I’ve learned to play perfectly or the average time it takes me to learn a new song. If the area of concern is my marriage or my relationship with one of my kids, that will probably be pretty hard to quantify; but even then I should have a pretty good subjective sense of the progress being made, if I take time to think about it.

Returning to the metaphor, if I’ve got 1K more miles until I reach my target destination, and my trajectory (i.e. pace) is 50 miles per hour, I’ve got an estimated 20 more hours of travel ahead of me. If that pace starts to slow down, I can decide whether I want it to speed back up and figure out what to change to accomplish that. If I decide 20 more hours of travel is too long, I can explore options to accelerate, to improve my trajectory.

4. TIME

Time is really just a one-word way of saying “Keep going!” Once I’ve got traction, have chosen a target, and am monitoring my trajectory — time does the rest. Time is absolutely critical, because pretty much any satisfying accomplishment is going take time. In fact, it’s the effort invested over time that makes an accomplishment satisfying.

Image of a red, 4-wheel-drive vehicle styled like a 2021 Toyota Sequoia driving on a road with a vibrant landscape that transitions from a colorful autumn forest in the foreground to snowy mountains in the distance. Behind the vehicle, a whirlwind of calendar pages creates a dynamic swirl in the air, symbolizing the passage of time. The pages have stylized scribbles that resemble handwriting, but no legible text, and are marked with various red highlights, denoting important dates. The effect is a visual representation of the vehicle moving swiftly through time as the seasons change around it.

Results tend to compound as the calendar pages turn, if I “keep my foot on the gas” consistently. Most of us are very familiar with this concept in the realm of compounding investment returns. Your trajectory toward your target balance will speed itself up over time, even if you don’t save more per month over time. The gains will compound. I find that the same is true for my investments in skills, knowledge, and strategy. Once my trajectory is good, even if it’s modest, time is very much my friend.

If I overlook the role of time in making progress, I get discouraged very easily. I’ve not yet reached my target, so ignoring time’s role can easily fool me into believing I’ve failed. But when I consider time to be an explicit phase of the process, I’m able to be encouraged by progress and keep going. If you’re heading in the right direction at a good pace, that’s really all that’s left to do — keep going!

The Long Game

In all of this, I try to keep some perspective on my personal timeline. Even at 40 years old, it’s reasonable to think I’ve got a lot of time to keep growing and progressing in all areas of my life possibly into my 60s or even 70s, barring bad luck in terms of health problems. I’ve had to learn to ignore the outlier stories of people rising to be executives by X years old, unicorn founders becoming billionaires in their 20s, and all the “30 under 30” lists.

As Product people, we’re extremely fortunate to get to peak late in our professional life. Unlike NFL football players, who probably need to find an entirely new career by the time they reach their late 20s, we can keep growing and improving professionally until a relatively late stage of life. That means that career and financial targets can have a very long timeline and still be achieved, if we maintain our traction and trajectory toward those targets.

There’s time to adjust as we go, and struggling now is preparation for success later — even if that success comes in a different field. And since the game is a long one, I can always step back up the list of four phases, whenever something isn’t working how I’d like:

This is going to take too long (i.e. time). How do I adjust my trajectory to fix that?
I’m struggling to keep my trajectory where I’d like — perhaps for lack of motivation. Is this still a target I’m interested in pursuing, or should I consider targeting a different destination to head toward?
This target is no longer appealing or seems unrealistic now. What area do I need more traction in, to make this target achievable or to support a target I’m now more interested in?

Enjoying the Struggle & Progress

I think enjoyment — finding joy and satisfaction — is a skill of its own. If I can’t enjoy the struggle of finding traction and find satisfaction in monitoring my trajectory over time, I won’t be able to truly enjoy the eventual destination I’ve been trying to reach. There’s no circumstance or achievement out ahead of me that will force joy or satisfaction upon me.

Image of a movie theater with rows of empty red seats facing a large screen, on which a film scene is displayed. The scene shows a red, 4-wheel-drive vehicle styled like a 2021 Toyota Sequoia parked on a sandy beach at sunset. The vehicle is positioned to the left of the frame, with luggage on its roof rack, suggesting the end of a long journey. On the beach, a person sits facing the ocean, watching a spectacular sunset with deep orange and blue hues. The sky is dotted with birds, and the ocean reflects the sun's glow. The tranquil scene conveys a sense of peaceful arrival and accomplishment.

I try like hell to practice those skills now, as I pursue the future I want. That way, by the time I finally get where I was trying to go, I can enjoy that as the next satisfying experience in a long line of them.

Feeling stuck right now? If so, what might give you a sense of traction, no matter how small it might be? And what joy can you find in the middle of this struggle? Remember that our struggling moments can become our fondest memories, once we eventually make our way from where we were stuck to where we wanted to be.

Start with traction, don’t forget to let time do its thing, and it’s totally up to you when you want to start enjoying all of it.