Would you believe that even the most accomplished individuals in their field deal with the feeling of being stuck?

Adam Alter, the author of Anatomy of a Breakthrough: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most relays that Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest living soccer player, is famously quite anxious. When he was starting out his coaches noted that while physically and athletically accomplished, he lacked temperament.

Messi subsequently had to learn to quell his anxiety, and his solution might seem paradoxical. “He learned to start the game by not playing for the first few minutes,” Alter told journalist Lila Seidman of the Los Angeles Times during From Day One’s May virtual conference. “He spends the first 2-3 minutes just ambling around. If you plot the path, everybody is darting around. Messi is barely moving: it quells his anxiety, but he’s also tactically beneficial, he’s surveying the territory. When it comes time to play for the remaining minutes, he’s in a better tactical position.”

At the core of Anatomy of a Breakthrough, is the idea that trying to counteract stuckness with frantic action is counterproductive.

Stuckness is something that is extended or chronic. “It’s not the momentary frustration. Those crop up all the time,” explained Alter. Being stuck is something that plagues people in the long haul. In addition, Alter urges people to focus away from achievement alone.

Rather, he is interested in the kind of positive outcomes that follow frustration, friction, and difficulty. “One of the interesting features is how many interesting paradoxes you encounter,” he explains. “When you’re stuck, you should do nothing. We tend to flail in the phase of stuckness. We’re well adapted to deal with physical stuckness, we're not adapted to deal with stuckness with emotional consequences. Before you do anything, grapple with the fact you’re in this provoking, lonely situation. There are paradoxes that apply to breaking free and breaking through.”

This involves reframing how to view the feeling of difficulty. Difficulty typically awakens strong, negative emotions. “As a species, [we need to] recognize we’re in the position of stuck and failing,” he explains. “Those failures, as you mount them, become the source behind success.” In fact, the idea of succeeding quickly is a myth. “The deeper you dig, you start to see that no success comes from a vacuum: it’s important to view those failures as essential, and that in itself calms people down,” says Alter.

Stuckness does not just plague individuals, but companies too. “When I was a grad student, when recruiters came to campus, they wouldn’t just go to the finance people,” recalls Alter. “A lot of these firms will say “show me the best Russian literature majors,” and pick from the non-overlapping fields.” This resulted in the recruitment of smart people who would learn on the job but would bring a different perspective to the workplace.

In addition, some companies purposely cultivate conflict: there’s evidence that if you have an incompetent AI bot that influences your process, even if it’s not productive, it shakes things up. These bots unstick you faster. 

On a human level, Pixar has adopted a similar strategy: while the bulk of the work consists of creating and animating immersive worlds where water flickers and even the thinnest strand of grass moves at the slightest breeze, they purposely bring in conflict in their artistic process. They’ll bring in a storytelling expert who intentionally cares little about graphics and visuals, shifting the focus. “The black sheep will push back,” says Alter. “You should have one or two in your circle.”

Getting unstuck also requires the act of reframing the way we perceive creativity. Creativity has two lenses, explains Alter. “One is the insight lens,” says Alter. “Insight is the one we most associate with the standard definition of creativity. Sure, some people have more insight than others, and this gives them more ideas. I find it an upsetting idea. It’s not supported by research,” says Alter. By contrast, the production lens says that creativity is a matter of circumstance, hard work, and a lot of sleep—and sleep is dramatically important.

“We have this illusion that we think that our best ideas come first and the bad ideas follow,” of course, it’s not factually correct. Try asking people to list unusual foods to eat at Thanksgiving. “The first 10 ideas tumble out, the others take effort to come by, because all the obvious stuff is gone,” explains Alter. “There’s a reason the first ideas come easily: they’re not creative.” People erroneously think that the ideas that come after are inherently worse. “If you spend an extra 10 minutes, those are the divergent drives,” says Alter. “It’s not just persevering: when things get hard, that’s when the good stuff starts to happen.”

Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Boston and Milan.