Overcoming Creator’s Block!

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London

There’s nothing more frustrating than a blinking cursor.

It’s almost mocking you.

You sit down, ready to create something amazing – a blog post, a newsletter, a podcast outline and suddenly your mind goes as blank as the page.

You end up moving from one tab to another, reading one article then another or, maybe watching a few YouTube videos that have no relevance or, connection to what you intended to do.

If you’ve been here before, you know it’s not just frustrating.

It’s paralyzing.

It’s what we call creator’s block.

I’ve been there more times than I care to admit.

In fact, my most painful run-in with creator’s block happened during the early days of my podcast.

The day I almost quit my podcast before it even started

I was working a 9-5 that was more stressful than the definition of stress itself.

Back-to-back meetings throughout the day, fire-fighting to put out fires that wasn’t even mine or, something I started and fixing problems that someone somewhere had created.

By the time I got home, my brain felt like a smartphone at 3% battery.

One Tuesday night, I sat down to record my podcast episode.

The mic was set up.

The outline was open.

I had coffee ready to power me through.

And… nothing.

I couldn’t find the right words.

Every sentence I tried felt awkward.

I must have hit the “stop” button fifteen times in twenty minutes.

At one point, I actually closed my laptop and thought, Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.

But here’s the thing: quitting wasn’t really an option.

Not because I had some big audience waiting. I didn’t.

But because I had promised myself I’d publish weekly.

And the only thing that saved me that day was that commitment.

Why creator’s block isn’t really about “lack of ideas”

When people think of creator’s block, they imagine running out of ideas.

In reality, the problem is rarely a shortage of ideas.

It’s usually one of these three things:

1. Overwhelm – You have too many ideas and can’t decide which one to pick.
2. Perfectionism – You’re scared to start because you think it has to be amazing from the first sentence.
3. Mental fatigue – Your brain is so drained from other demands that creativity feels impossible.

That night with my podcast, it was a deadly mix of all three.

The breakthrough came when I stopped trying to “create from scratch” and started following a simple process to get moving, even when I didn’t feel inspired.

My 5-step process to go from blank page to published post

It was a lot later that I finally created a system that would help me stay in the game without a creator’s block ever.

And that system had 5 simple repeatable steps.

If you follow these steps, you’ll never be at the mercy of creator’s block again.

You might still have slow starts but you’ll always have a way forward.

1. Lower the bar to “bad first draft”

“If you wait for perfection, you will never start.”

The hardest part of creating is often getting started.

So, your first goal isn’t to create something great.

It’s to create something. Period!

When I’m stuck, I tell myself:

This draft is not meant to be good. It’s meant to exist.

The magic?

Once you have words on the page, improving them becomes much easier than creating from zero.

Pro tip: Use a 10-minute timer and promise yourself you can stop after that. You won’t stop but you’ll bypass that heavy mental resistance.

2. Use prompts instead of starting cold

If you’re looking at a blank page, your brain has nothing to work with.

Prompts give you something to push against.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• “What’s the biggest problem my audience faced this week?”
• “What lesson did I learn in the last 7 days?”
• “What’s one thing I wish I had known when I started?”

For my podcast, I started writing answers to these questions instead of trying to “come up with a topic” from scratch.

Half the time, the answer itself became my content.

Book recommendation: Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon is full of ways to spark creativity by building on existing ideas.

3. Create before you consume

This one is tough in today’s world.

The moment we feel stuck, we tend to scroll, read, or watch other people’s content for “inspiration.”

The problem? Consuming first usually kills your original ideas and makes you compare yourself to others.

Instead, make it a rule:

No checking email, social media, or even news until you’ve done your daily creative work.

When I started recording my podcast in the mornings before work, before checking my phone, my output tripled.

4. Break it into “tiny publishes”

If publishing an entire post, video, or episode feels overwhelming, break it down.

Instead of thinking, I need to write an article, think:

I need to write 200 words today.

Instead of I have to record a 30-minute episode, think:

I’ll record just the intro.

These small wins keep you moving forward and remove the crushing pressure of a “big publish.”

This is how I survived my first six months of podcasting one small recording at a time.

5. Build a consistency habit

The ultimate cure for creator’s block isn’t inspiration.

It’s habit.

When you create on a schedule, your brain learns that “this is just what we do”, like brushing your teeth or making coffee.

I started by committing to publish my podcast every Tuesday, no matter what.

Some episodes were great.

Some were… less great.

But that consistency turned me into someone who finishes things.

Book recommendation: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is the best book I’ve read on pushing through resistance and doing the work.

The quiet power of publishing consistently

Here’s the part no one tells you.

When you publish consistently, even if some posts or episodes aren’t perfect, you start trusting yourself.

You realize that you can show up and deliver even on the bad days.

And over time, that trust in yourself is what builds confidence, audience, and momentum.

That Tuesday night when I almost quit my podcast?

I forced myself to record something.

It wasn’t my best.

But I hit publish.

Looking back now, that imperfect episode mattered more than the polished ones.

Because it kept me in the game.

Your turn

If you’re staring at a blank page right now, here’s your challenge:

• Write a “bad first draft” in the next 15 minutes.
• Use one of the prompts above to get started.
• Break it down into small, winnable steps.
• Publish it, even if it’s imperfect.

Do that enough times, and you’ll stop fearing the blank page altogether.

Because you’ll know you have a process to get from stuck to published, every single time.

Recommended Newsletters

Here are few newsletters that I would recommend that you sign up to if you are interested in learning the art of running a side-hustle:

• Write, Build, Scale
• Why we buy
• The Book Bub
• The Stacked Marketer
• The Growth Bulletin
• Unconventional Productivity for Online Business Owners
• Side Hustle Weekly
• The Affiliate Guy
• I will teach you to be rich
• How Brands win
• For the Interested
• Send and Grow

Sign up to these and follow them. You will get a lot of information and content for your blog posts, podcasts and even social media posts.

I will share more such ideas in my future newsletters.

I put in about 18 hours every month to create this newsletter, starting from researching to writing and editing it.

So, If you enjoyed reading this Newsletter, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could recommend it to others. You can send them to https://thegrowthcreator.com to subscribe to it for FREE!

What am I reading?

I absolutely love books and I read a lot.

In fact, I don’t just read a lot, but I also take notes on every book that I read.

I have pages and pages of information in my Notion Second Brain, so that I can find them and use them when ever I need.

I have added some of the newest books that I have been reading, to the Amazon store, so you might want to check it out.

Want to know more about the books I read. You can check it out here!

That’s it for this week!

Do let me know your thoughts, feedback, and opinions about this newsletter.

If you have a question or, simply enjoy reading this, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. You can use this link to do that.

If you are comfortable writing a review for the newsletter, you can do that here. Your support would be sincerely appreciated.