On Blocks
The creative equivalent of a performance plateau
As I sat down in the box for Marta’s first match in Indian Wells, a gentleman tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could take a moment of my time. He told me that he reads my Substack and that those reflections mean a lot to him.
I thanked him, genuinely. Just earlier that day I was thinking that I’m not sure that I’ll continue writing. Not because of anything dramatic, but simply because for a while I had no inspiration and anything I was trying to write felt forced. Nothing I wrote sounded right to me, so I figured that maybe my writing days are past, at least for the time being.
I needed that moment of appreciation (thank you, sir). Not for validation, but for perspective. Because it made me pause and reflect on what that “block” I had been feeling actually meant.
The truth is, the longer you do something, the harder it becomes to approach it with fresh eyes.
When I first started writing these articles, the ideas almost felt impatient. Observations from the tour, from the invisible dynamics that exist around performance — they were all sitting somewhere in my mind waiting to be translated into words. Writing felt like discovery. Every article helped me clarify something I had been thinking about but hadn’t fully articulated yet.
But after writing for a while, something changes.
You sit down and suddenly every idea feels strangely familiar. You start wondering if you’ve already said this before, or if you’re repeating yourself. If the insight that once felt sharp has now become obvious.
You open a document and think: haven’t I already written about this? Haven’t I already talked about pressure, about development, about the invisible side of performance?
And slowly the words stop coming.
What is interesting is that this phenomenon is not unique to writing. It happens in coaching as well.
The longer I work with Marta, the more I sometimes ask myself: what am I missing?
Not because there is something wrong with the work we are doing, but because when you look at the same player, the same game, the same patterns and tendencies for long enough, the brain starts to operate differently.
In the beginning everything stands out, you notice all the small details. Tactical tendencies, movement patterns, emotional reactions. Everything feels like new information.
But over time those same details stop feeling like discoveries. They become familiar and predictable.
And familiarity can be deceptive.
Because when something becomes deeply familiar, it can create the illusion that you’ve already explored it fully.
But in reality, the opposite is often true. You are not seeing less — you are simply seeing through the lens of experience.
The brain is an incredible efficiency machine. Once it understands a pattern, it stops consciously processing it. It compresses the information. It turns something that once required attention into something automatic.
This is extremely useful in performance — a tennis player who had to consciously process every movement would never be able to compete at a high level. Automaticity is what allows elite performance to exist. But that same mechanism can also create blindness.
When something becomes too familiar, we stop questioning it.
And when we stop questioning something, we stop discovering it.
This is often the moment when people experience what they call a “block.”
But maybe that word is misleading. A block suggests that something is wrong. That something is broken. That creativity or progress has suddenly stopped.
But if we look closely, many of the most meaningful developments happen exactly during these periods.
In tennis we call them plateaus.
Players improve quickly at first, results come, confidence improves. Then suddenly progress seems to stall. For weeks or months nothing looks different. The player feels stuck.
From the outside it looks like stagnation. But from a developmental perspective, plateaus are often when deeper integration is happening. The nervous system is reorganizing, new patterns are stabilizing. The player is moving from conscious competence to unconscious competence.
Growth hasn’t stopped, it has simply moved below the visible surface.
Maybe creativity works the same way. Maybe what we call a creative block is actually the moment when our current perspective has reached its natural limit.
We have explored what we can see from this particular vantage point. The ideas that once felt new are now integrated. The questions that once felt urgent have been partially answered.
And before the next insight can emerge, something inside us needs to reorganize…. this is why forcing creativity rarely works.
When something feels forced, it usually means we are trying to produce from the same perspective that has already been exhausted. And the brain resists that.
Not because there is nothing left to say, but because the ideas that want to emerge require a slightly different lens. They cannot come from the same place.
In that sense, a block might not be a step backward at all. It might actually be the moment right before a step up.
The moment when the old framework has done its job, but the new one hasn’t fully formed yet.
Seen from that perspective, a creative block might not be an absence of ideas at all. It might be a transition, a quiet moment where the mind is preparing to see the same world from a slightly higher vantage point.
Which brings me back to something I’ve started thinking about ever since that moment before the match:
Maybe these moments are simply invitations to zoom out.
Because the longer we stay inside something — a career, a relationship, a place, even an identity — the harder it becomes to see it clearly.
What once felt exciting becomes routine. What once demanded attention becomes background.
This is not because the thing itself has lost value, but it is because familiarity compresses perception.
The mind starts filtering information differently. It prioritizes efficiency over curiosity.
And then one day we find ourselves asking the uncomfortable question: am I missing something?
Sometimes people interpret that question as a sign that something needs to change. A new job, a new environment, or a new direction.
But not every moment of saturation is a signal to leave.
Sometimes it is simply a signal to zoom out, to create distance from something we have been too close to for too long.
Distance has a fascinating effect on perception. It restores contrast. It allows us to see patterns that were invisible when we were standing inside them.
This is why athletes often understand their game differently after stepping away for a little while. Why writers find clarity after not writing for a bit. Why people sometimes rediscover appreciation for something only after taking distance from it.
Perspective requires space.
Without space, everything blends together.
Which is why that moment in the box stayed with me.
Because while I was sitting there thinking that maybe I had nothing left to write, someone else was reminding me that the reflections still mattered.
And it made me realize that maybe I had been asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking whether there was anything left to say, maybe the real question was whether the way I had been looking at things had reached its limit.
In tennis this happens constantly. A player develops within a certain understanding of the game, until eventually that understanding stops being enough. For a while the progress disappears and from the outside it looks like stagnation.
But very often it’s just the space between two levels of understanding.
And maybe writing isn’t that different.
🔥🔥
Add my vote to the brave spectator! And I'm happy to wait between your posts until you're ready. I believe in taking breaks!