A framework that I have found helpful for situations like this:
When you feel this way, that you "want to" do something but it keeps not happening, then there's evidently something inconsistent in your mental state: you seem to think you want to do one thing, but (it would be fair to say) since you're not doing it, maybe you don't 'actually want' to do it. The idea being that 'true wanting' compels actions. So when you fantasize about doing one thing, which you think you want, you're actually in the process of fulfilling a different want about something else (such as: "to feel like you are making progress on demonstrating value").
To disentangle this you have to figure out what you "actually want", resolving the inconsistency, usually by asking yourself: "what do my actual behaviors reveal of my actual desires?" Recognizing the revealed desire seems, empirically, to help move past it, while not recognizing it leaves you/me/whoever in this seemingly infinite loop of feeling incapable of action.
Sometimes just revealing the loop you're in unkinks it immediately and leaves you free to do something new. Sometimes, strangely, it makes you instantly uninterested in the whole topic, and then, in the space left by the now-uninteresting topic, new interests float in --- real interests, which come packaged with 'real' wanting that you can actually act on.
This is a nice little self-interrogation framework—thanks for sharing!
It reminds me of a common refrain/warning among aspiring writers: it's not enough to want to be a writer, you have to actually want to write. Both for a host of psychological reasons and for the simple fact that you'll never be A Writer unless you're putting pen to paper on a regular basis.
When you feel this way, that you "want to" do something but it keeps not happening, then there's evidently something inconsistent in your mental state: you seem to think you want to do one thing, but (it would be fair to say) since you're not doing it, maybe you don't 'actually want' to do it. The idea being that 'true wanting' compels actions. So when you fantasize about doing one thing, which you think you want, you're actually in the process of fulfilling a different want about something else (such as: "to feel like you are making progress on demonstrating value").
To disentangle this you have to figure out what you "actually want", resolving the inconsistency, usually by asking yourself: "what do my actual behaviors reveal of my actual desires?" Recognizing the revealed desire seems, empirically, to help move past it, while not recognizing it leaves you/me/whoever in this seemingly infinite loop of feeling incapable of action.
Sometimes just revealing the loop you're in unkinks it immediately and leaves you free to do something new. Sometimes, strangely, it makes you instantly uninterested in the whole topic, and then, in the space left by the now-uninteresting topic, new interests float in --- real interests, which come packaged with 'real' wanting that you can actually act on.