How do I work on the days I just can’t?
You don’t argue with the sky
You dress for it.
“There’s always something to say from wherever you are.”
Not from a chapter — based on an interview with Jacob Collier, British musician and arranger.
When it happens to you
You sit down to work and you’re cross with yourself: yesterday it flowed, today nothing. So you force yourself, you spend three hours wrestling with the same sentence, and the day’s lost anyway.
Why forcing yourself never works
You’re trying to create against your state instead of with it. But your state isn’t a lack of willpower to be fixed, it’s a fact of the day, just like rain. You don’t argue with the rain, you change your shoes.
Rule
Where do I find myself today, without trying to change myself?
How to work with the weather, in 4 steps
- Before you start, look at your inner sky the way you look out of the window. Gale-force winds? Fog? Dead calm?
- Choose the work that suits it. Sluggish day: tidy, rename, reread. Electric day: write the scene that scares you. Fragile day: the letter, the diary.
- Change instrument, not goal. If the page won’t take, switch to images, to voice, to a list. The project still moves forward.
- And then there are the off days. On those, you don’t work, and it isn’t failure — it’s moderation.
⚠ The weather isn’t a permanent excuse
If every day has been an off day for weeks, it’s no longer the weather: it’s the climate, and this guide won’t fix that. Have a look at guide 25 instead — your body may already have answered for you.
What it changes for you
You stop losing days fighting yourself, and you win back the ones you thought were wasted. A lot of useful work gets done on sluggish days: that’s when you tidy, reread and see what you’d stopped seeing.
How to practise
One line in the morning, before you open anything: the weather, and the task that goes with it. One week is enough to learn your climates.
Remember
You don’t argue with the sky. You dress for it.
You may be wondering
How do I know what the weather’s like?
3 questions are enough: do I have momentum, patience, or neither? Each one opens up a different kind of task.
And what if I have no choice, if there’s a deadline?
Then you change instrument, not goal: you dictate instead of writing, you make an outline instead of a text. It’s quicker than forcing it.
Isn’t this just a way of making excuses?
The difference fits in one line: an excuse avoids the work, the weather chooses which work. If you end the day having done nothing at all, it wasn’t the weather.