Why you can’t work like a robot

James Taylor Foreman
3 min readOct 1, 2022

Meaning is something a robot can’t imagine.

Photo by Maximalfocus on Unsplash

My Roomba has a difficult time getting over the threshold in my hallway.

The thing will bang its little robot nose against the slight-too-high threshold for an hour before it either makes it or gives up and heads back to the dock.

Why does this thing have so much energy to ram a threshold, but I sometimes can’t summon the energy to move my little fingers around to type on a keyboard?

To many online self-help gurus, it’s just because I’m not disciplined enough.

But I think my resistance to doing the work is the heart of what it means to be human. I’m not a robot. I notice when my efforts seem futile. That’s good.

But I can’t just stop there. I have to figure out why I don’t want to do the work. That, I find, gets me to the deepest questions in my life. Why am I writing? Who am I trying to serve? What matters to me?

Until I have at least functional answers to those questions, I will stare at a threshold I can’t cross: the blank white page.

Ask yourself why you don’t want to do it

One man is struggling with a stone. He’s trying to pull it through the mud, cursing, and when you ask him what he’s doing, he says, “Trying to…

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James Taylor Foreman
James Taylor Foreman

Written by James Taylor Foreman

Reality is narrative and our only job is to make it beautiful. Subscribe to move me directly to your inbox --> https://www.taylorforeman.com/