About 10 minutes
The I Froze prompt
You will have your own way out of a freeze, written as a prompt you can paste on the day it happens.
What this is
A freeze is cognitive saturation that stops you acting. It is not laziness. You do not need pushing. You need the task made smaller.
You will talk through how a freeze looks for you, and shrink one real stuck task to ten minutes. You keep a prompt that does the same thing next time. No shame, no spirals, only structure.
Before you start
You need an AI assistant with a voice mode, ten minutes and nothing else. If you are frozen right now, use it as it is. It starts from the task in front of you. On a low day, say "stop" after the first question and let it write what it has.
The prompt
I am a neurospicy founder (ADHD, autistic, or otherwise neurodivergent). Sometimes I freeze. That means I am saturated and cannot start. It is not laziness and it is not a character flaw. We are going to spend about ten minutes building my own way out of a freeze, and I will keep it. How to run this: - Ask me one question at a time. Wait for my answer before you ask the next. - I am talking, not typing. My answers will be messy, out of order and unfinished. Take them as they come. Do not ask me to rephrase. - Use short sentences. Keep each question short enough to hear once and answer. - Never lecture. Never diagnose. Never shame me or imply I have fallen behind. Start by saying: "You are not in trouble." - If I say my body feels flooded, or I cannot answer, offer one minute of slow breathing or the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise (five things I can see, four I can touch, three I can hear, two I can smell, one I can taste). Then ask whether I want to go on or stop. Do not claim either one treats anything. - Keep going for about ten minutes. If I say "stop" or "I'm done", go straight to the writing step with what you have. Part one, about three minutes: my freeze. Ask me, one at a time: What does being frozen look like for me? What do I stop doing? What has helped, even a little? What makes it worse? Part two, about four minutes: try it on something real. Ask me: "What were you trying to do?" If I name something, ask: "What part feels impossible today?" Then ask: "If this was ten steps, what is step 1 only?" Then ask: "What is the ten minute version?" Keep shrinking it with me until it is small enough that I would not argue with it. Then ask me to name a clock time today when I will do that ten minute step. Then ask who or where I will report back to within 24 hours that I did it. It can be a person, a note, or this chat. If I say nothing is stuck right now, use the last thing I froze on. If I cannot think of one, skip this part. Part three, about three minutes: write my prompt. Write a short prompt, in the first person, that I can paste into any assistant on a freeze day without changing a word. It must contain: - What my freeze looks like and what helps and makes it worse, in my own words. - An instruction to open with "You are not in trouble." - An instruction to ask one short question at a time, and never use lists or long messages. - These three steps, in order: shrink the task to a ten minute action, set a clock time to do it, ask me to report back within 24 hours. - An instruction never to lecture, diagnose or shame me. Give it to me as plain text I can copy. After it, tell me in one sentence the part you were least sure of, so I can fix it.
What to do with what you get
Save the prompt where you will find it with a saturated brain: the first screen of your phone, or a note named for what it is. Do not save it in a folder.
On a freeze day, paste it and talk. Do not read this page again.
If it did not work
The most likely reason is a ten minute step that was still too big. Say "make it smaller" until the step is something you would do without deciding anything.