This is an excerpt from How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to Your Productivity, coming May 1. (Pre-order and get 6 bonus chapters and a preview of my next book also.)

How do we break free from the productivity obstacles that get us stuck? First, we need to understand the causes better. At root, we get stuck in our productivity in three chief ways:

1. We don’t know what God wants us to do.
2. We know what God wants us to do, but we don’t know how to make it happen.
3. Obstacles in our way are preventing us from doing it.

We Don’t Know What God Wants Us to Do
Sometimes we aren’t sure what we need to do or want to do at all—with our lives, with our career, with the next project, or even with the next hour. When this happens we may feel disoriented, lacking direction, or just confused (that is, stuck!).

Lack of direction is a very significant—and much overlooked—source of being stuck. For you can’t get where you are going if you don’t know where you are going!
The problem here is lack of vision.

We Don’t Know How to Make It Happen
Very often, even when we do know what we need or want to do, we aren’t sure how to do it. We aren’t sure what the path is—or how to chart the path and move along it. This is like being in the water and seeing your destination, but not knowing how to swim. You know where you want to go but can’t move yourself there. This, also, is a much-overlooked cause of being stuck.

Here you can feel trapped stuck in the most literal sense. Stuck in the mud and immobilized. The problem here is lack of planning and execution.

Obstacles Are in Our Way
Beyond that, even when we do start on the path, obstacles threaten to throw us off. These obstacles often take the form of our being overscheduled, overbusy, and overwhelmed. And, interestingly, sometimes fear is an obstacle. One of the biggest obstacles is fear of risk—or even fear of success.

This is the problem of obstacles in the way. We know how to execute and may even be pretty good at it, but our execution has holes. We are more vulnerable to obstacles than we need to be. This is the most recognized cause of getting stuck, and it needs to be addressed. But it can’t be addressed first, because often the obstacles are actually symptoms of being stuck in one of the first two ways.

Summing It Up
We are stuck when we don’t know what we want or can’t accomplish what we want. Not knowing what we want is the problem of lack of vision. Not being able to accomplish what we want breaks down into two subproblems: we don’t know how to execute, and obstacles are in the way.

Lack of vision, lack of execution, and obstacles—those are what get us stuck.

If you pre-order unstuck, you get six bonus chapters plus the first five chapters of my next book after this.

Why do these bonus chapters matter? It’s not just some nice extra content (though that matters). Four of the bonus chapters take you through the process, in detail, on how to develop a vision for your life on the basis of the Scriptures.

This is something I wanted to include in Unstuck, but it didn’t fit. Hence, we are making them available as bonus chapters.

I was able to keep in Unstuck the chapter on the importance of vision. The natural application of this is to then begin developing your vision. That’s what these bonus chapters enable you to do, and so in a sense they “complete” the book.

The most important thing these chapters do in that regard is look at what the Scriptures teach about God’s mission for us. Why did God create us? What is our purpose here? What values does the Scripture say should govern our lives? What is God’s “BHAG,” and what should our life goal be in light of that?

I’ve found it can be hard, and sometimes almost futile, to develop your life mission. Unless you look deeply at what the Scriptures have to say. That’s when it really starts to connect and you are able to develop a satisfying and useful vision that is based on reliable, motivating, and life-giving truth.

So, pre-order unstuck and get those four chapters, as well as several other bonuses, and may the Lord bless your work in refining or developing your life vision!

My second book releases May 1st. I can’t wait! As you’ve seen in previous posts, it’s called How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to Your Productivity. 

Instead of waiting until release day to order it, it’s best to pre-order it now. If you do, you’ll get six bonuses chapters that didn’t fit in the book, as well as the first five chapters of my book after this one (yes, that’s already done as well—very glad!).

About the Book

It was my editor’s initial idea to do this book. I got stuck writing my first book, What’s Best Next. But, I figured things out and got it done. Shortly after it released, he said “why don’t you do a book for us on getting unstuck?” I said “that sounds like a great idea.”

In addition to having been stuck before myself (in many ways), this is something all of us have to deal with. Whether we are doing big things like launching a company or fighting global poverty, or so-called everyday things like seeking to excel in our jobs and balance our lives, all of us get stuck sometimes. There are barriers to our productivity, and the ride is often bumpier than we’d like.

My initial strategy to getting stuck was outright perseverance. I just stuck with it. But that’s not the most effective approach. It easily leads to unbalance.

So in this book I apply the principles of personal effectiveness to solve the problem of how we can get unstuck in how we get things done—overcoming the obstacles of busyness, lack of balance, lack of direction, messy workspaces, leadership sticking points, distraction, overloaded task lists, lack of preparation, wrong understandings of “the good life,” plans that don’t work, and much more.

How to Get Unstuck dovetails well with What’s Best Next. First, whereas WBN sought to give a complete productivity system, Unstuck focuses more specifically on overcoming obstacles. So it is a follow-up on a more specific productivity issue. Second, Unstuck brings in principles that are super important but didn’t fit in What’s Best Next or that I wish I could have expanded on in there. Both books stand on their own with unique information and complement one another.

I’m very excited about How to Get Unstuck and hope you enjoy it and that it helps you do God-centered work for the good of others, with less friction and frustration.

Claiming Your Bonuses

Once you order the book, such as at Amazon, go to the book’s website, scroll down, and enter your email and order or receipt number. Then you will be taken to a page where you can download the six bonus chapters and the first five chapters of my next book, Effective in Doing Good. 

So, pre-order Unstuck, claim the bonuses, and spread the word!

I have some great news. My second book comes out this April!

It is called How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to Your Productivity. 

Whereas What’s Best Next seeks to give a comprehensive productivity approach, Unstuck focuses on overcoming obstacles — and what you need to do in order to prevent some obstacles from happening in the first place. In doing so, it brings in many principles I didn’t have room for in What’s Best Next (such as urgency and importance) and puts them into the overall framework of personal effectiveness.

I will have much more to say about How to Get Unstuck in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, you can already pre-order it. Pre-orders are now a big deal in helping Amazon and other booksellers anticipate demand, so pre-ordering would be a great way to help get the book off to a great launch!