Pragmatist philosopher William James identified something he called 'the will to believe' — the idea that certain truths only become available through committed action, not prior deliberation. But there's a sharper edge to this that James buried in his 1890 Principles of Psychology: he noticed that the nervous system itself requires novelty to maintain what he called 'plasticity.' A mind given no new inputs doesn't idle — it begins cannibalizing itself, running old loops with increasing intensity. This maps onto something specific about stagnation that neither productivity advice nor therapy tends to name directly: the problem isn't that you lack motivation to move. It's that prolonged stillness creates a kind of epistemic closure — the range of possibilities your brain generates genuinely narrows, not metaphorically but functionally, because possibility-generation is itself a skill that atrophies without use. James's practical prescription was radical for a philosopher: don't wait for belief to precede action. Borrow the posture of someone who already believes the situation is changeable — not because you're convinced, but because the evidence for changeability can only be generated from inside motion. The stagnation isn't the wall. It's the consequence of treating the wall as permanent.

What is the smallest unit of novelty you could introduce today that has nothing to do with solving your current problems — a different route, a different order, a different surface — and have you actually done it, or only considered it?

Drawing from American Pragmatism — William James (Principles of Psychology, 1890; The Will to Believe, 1897)