The Creative Doldrums – and How to Escape Them

Maybe it’s something of an anachronism these days, but when I was growing up, if you were feeling out of sorts and lacking motivation you’d say you were ‘in the doldrums’, a kind of shorthand for a state of psychological stagnation. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I discovered the doldrums is a nautical term describing an actual place.

The doldrums lie 5 degrees either side of the equator and are a region where the competing trade winds of the northern and southern hemispheres cancel each other out, the hot temperatures drive air upwards, and, during the age of sail, ships would be becalmed for days, weeks or even longer. Surrounded by the endless ocean, crews could be driven insane. Coleridge describes the doldrums in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner …

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Now whether you’re a seafarer or not, I’m pretty you’ve experienced your own particular doldrums. That feeling that often hits in the middle of a project, when both the end and the beginning seem out of sight and you feel stranded, alone and desperate, in the middle of a vast and unfriendly (if metaphorical) ocean.

The good news is that you’re not alone, and there’s some helpful psychological research to explain this phenomenon, as well as a series of simple strategies you can use to fill your sails with wind once more. Let’s turn our gaze from Coleridge and his woeful mariner to Clark Hull and a colony of rats.

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