Stuck in a rut? Change lanes.

Editor’s note: this blog post was originally written in 2012

Remember the feeling in college at the start of a new term? It was so fresh, so open. You had a nice, thick stack of books, a syllabus and a course schedule. What you didn’t have was a B-minus on a midterm, two missed assignments or a backlog of reading haunting you.

It was as if each term was a chance to hit the reset button. And oh, how I loved that button.

That was college. After nearly seven years with my company and fifteen years in the full-time working world, I notice a key difference about work: there is no reset button.

Sure, you might take a week or two off for vacation, but how hard is that? There are late-night hours spent delivering projects right up until you leave for the break, and stuff that invariably bleeds over into vacation. There’s checking the iPhone until your spouse gives you the stinkeye, and the hundreds of emails that accumulate in your time away.

It’s like being punished for taking a break.

Lesson learned: there is no reset button. And so I often find that energy ebbs and flows—sometimes I’m on a positive high, delivering an exceptional project, or the excitement of brainstorming with smart and passionate colleagues.

Then there’s the low: watching a project get drop-kicked for other priorities, endless do-overs when you’d rather have just done it right the first time, and the frustration the creeps in when you’ve just spent 20 or 40 hours sweating over something that is either not valued, no longer needed or not putting points on the board for your team.

Ebb and flow. And in those times of ebb, I seriously need a reset button.

I love how universities and some companies (such as Intel) offer a sabbatical. That, I think, is the ultimate reset button — a way to so thoroughly disengage from work that you come back refreshed with a new perspective, new research and new skills.

I could put this pipe dream on a wish list, or I could do something about it. So I decided to create my own reset button.

Consider that your life is like a wide freeway: maybe four or five lanes, each lane corresponding to part of your life. There’s a work lane, a family lane, a friends lane, a lane for hobbies or for self-improvement. You might have a lane for spirituality or a lane for learning.

Imagine yourself as a driver on that freeway, and each lane is occupied by vehicles moving at various speeds (these could be your boss, your colleagues, friends and family, or a personal goal).

How do you navigate through the traffic? How do you get to where you want to be?

My answer is this: when you get stuck or slowed down in one lane, change lanes! Create momentum in another part of your life. If you let yourself get stuck behind obstacles in a single lane, but do nothing to change your focus, you won’t be going anywhere fast.

So if you’re stuck at work, look to your hobbies or your family. Sign up for a class. Plan a vacation. Kick off a kickass project. Call a handful of friends and throw a party for no other reason than to create more positive energy in your life.

Creating this momentum won’t make the work problems go away, but it will add perspective and release the pent-up energy you feel in that lane of life. And with some of the energy released (remember that reset button?), you might feel refreshed enough to regroup and tackle the traffic jam.