When you can’t change the situation, change the size of the next task. Smaller wins add up.

There are stretches where the circumstances are simply fixed, and pushing on them produces nothing but tiredness. The one variable still yours is scale. A task small enough to finish hands back the thing the situation took away, which is the experience of having moved at all. Several of those in a row add up to real progress, even though none of them felt like much.

Shrink one thing today until it is almost silly. Ten minutes, one page, one message, one set. Do that version rather than the ambitious one you have been failing to start, and let the next size up wait.