When you hit a wall — mentally, creatively, emotionally — the instinct is to push harder. It almost never works. Here's the counterintuitive approach that does.
Most of us know the feeling — you're working on something and hit a problem you simply cannot solve in the moment. You try harder. You go around it again. You stare at it from different angles. And somehow the harder you try, the more stuck you feel. What was frustrating becomes demoralising, and your mood spirals downward with it.
For people with anxiety or ADHD, this experience can be particularly intense. The frustration compounds quickly, and what starts as a practical obstacle can rapidly become an emotional one. But there is a well-researched reason why pushing harder makes things worse — and a simple alternative that genuinely helps.
Dr. Herbert Benson and William Proctor, in their book The Breakout Principle, describe a four-stage process that explains what happens when we step away from a problem. The most striking element is the final stage: a release of nitric oxide throughout the body — a gas involved in neurotransmission and blood vessel dilation — which helps counteract the stress hormone noradrenaline. The result is a physiological shift that can produce clarity, insight, and what athletes describe as peak experience.
"Often within a short time after stepping away, the solution comes — or at the very least, a new perspective on the problem emerges that wasn't there before."
You don't need to remember the biology. The practical application is beautifully simple: when you hit a roadblock, stop. Move your attention to something relaxing, even briefly. Then return.
The challenge is that this approach goes against every instinct. When we're stuck, stopping feels like giving up. The pressure to keep pushing — especially with anxiety or ADHD driving a sense of urgency — makes it very difficult to step back even when we know it would help.
Recognising this resistance in advance is the key. When you notice yourself getting increasingly frustrated with a problem, treat that frustration as a signal — not to push harder, but to deliberately pause. The frustration itself is telling you that the current approach isn't working.
When you hit a roadblock — in work, in a creative project, in a difficult conversation you're preparing for — stop what you're doing entirely.
Move to something genuinely different and more relaxing. A short walk, a few minutes of breathing, making a cup of tea, listening to music. The key is that it's a real transition, not just staring at the ceiling thinking about the problem.
Return when you feel ready — often sooner than you'd expect. Many people find the solution arrives during the break itself, or within minutes of returning.
There's a secondary benefit worth noting. Deliberately transitioning between activities throughout your day — rather than grinding through one thing for hours — creates a natural ebb and flow that makes life feel more satisfying. Days that have variety, even in small ways, tend to feel more manageable and more productive than days of relentless focus on a single task.
For ADHD sufferers in particular, working with your brain's natural rhythm rather than against it — allowing for transitions, building in variety, using brief breaks strategically — tends to produce better results than demanding sustained, unbroken attention.