Stuck happens

Automotive Design & Production, July, 2004

No matter how energized, invigorated, or otherwise actively motivated you are in your job, inevitably you're going to get to a point where things just seem as though you've hit a wall of marshmallow fluff: no, you've not slammed into something that knocks the fillings out of your teeth, you're just at a place where all movement takes more effort and the results are less than they would ordinarily be. In a word, you're stuck. It happens.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Keith Yamashita (consultant to CEOs) and Sandra Spataro (Yale assistant prof of organizational behavior) have collaborated on what is physically a book, Unstuck: A Tool for Yourself, Your Team, and Your World (Portfolio; $19.95), but which, they admit, started out as a deck of flash cards: remember those cards you used as a kid to learn how to spell or add or whatever? These cards-turned-pages are created--and they are remarkably creative--to (1) help you figure out how you're stuck (they have codified seven possibilities, from being overwhelmed to feeling worthless) and (2) help you figure out how to become unstuck. The formula is one that combines comparatively minimal text (what you've read here so far is about as much as is found on a given page) with drawings, photographs, charts, diagrams, pages to write on, and other graphic levers for getting you out of your rut. The book is organized so that you can go from page O straight through to 179 or you can use it as a troubleshooting tool, where you start with the diagnosis of your condition and then follow the indicated paths that can help release you from your mental/organizational malady. The book is provocative. And fun.

One of the shortcomings, however, is that they provide a list of readings, and none of them come along with a URL that would allow you to access them in short order. After all, if you're stuck, you need all the help you can to get unstuck--sooner, rather than later.--GSV