Get Your Butt in the Chair

What to do when your brain says absolutely not.

Byron Lane

Jun 11, 2026

∙ Paid

Victory.

It was one of those writing days that make me love being alive.

I sat at my desk in the morning with a mug of hot coffee and suddenly it was 7 p.m.

I forgot to eat. I forgot to feel insecure.

I finished a draft of a new play and sent it to a collaborator for notes.

Defeat.

The note was: This is off.

Oh.

Oh no.

The note was smart, generous, correct. Which is the best kind, and the most annoying kind.

I could see it instantly. I wrote a solid piece. A solid first draft. But it was absolutely not the story I really wanted to tell.

I built the wrong house for the moment. Okay. Time to rewrite.

Then a force field went up around my desk.

No way.

I’m not being dramatic (I’m being a little dramatic), but I could not get my butt back in that chair.

I tried everything except sitting down.

I even drove to Los Angeles for a He-Man event with my friend Erin—our friend Mackenzi Lee wrote a great novel about Teela from the Masters of the Universe movie—and on the drive, ideas came. Good ones! Real solutions!

Nope.

I got home and approached my desk and the force field was humming back at me: Nah. Nope. Get out of here.

This went on for days.

The ideas were in my head. The chair was right there. And the distance between them might as well have been from here to Eternia (He-Man’s home planet, look it up).

While in LA, I also saw a friend who talked about ADHD. And because my phone listens to everything (hi, phone), my TikTok algorithm started feeding me ADHD hacks.

Hacks.

One of the hacks stopped my scroll: Make your desk a happy place.

I looked at my desk. It was a monument to obligation. To-do lists facing me like a firing squad. Every visible object whispering you’re behind and will never catch up.

No wonder some animal part of my brain had decided this was not a friendly place.

So I rearranged it.

I moved the to-do lists so they’re not in my face. I pulled my favorite childhood He-Man action figures from my closet and put them on my desk—my new coworkers. I even hung my old He-Man castle on my wall. (Pending husband’s approval.)

Breakthrough.

The force field weakened.

I sat.

I looked at my little plastic friends.

I smiled.

I was in the seat. And getting to work didn’t feel as impossible.

I learned some other helpful hacks.

Here are five things that pulled me out of the ditch this time.

Maybe they’ll help you, too.