Solo founders: what should you do on those days when there’s no progress?

At times, the metrics will not move no matter how many tricks I pull out of the bag. I get zero sign-ups, zero replies, a weird support message. Last month I spent three straight days on such metrics and discovered that during this time I was just doing all kinds of productive but futile things. I organised the folder structure, redid the footer, did pricing page comparison for the fourth time.

Gradually, I started maintaining a list of activities called "boring but real". It contains actions that will make some kind of movement even when I am totally uninspired: sending one message to a past customer asking what he does manually now, fixing one bug reported via support mail, deleting one rarely used feature. All these tasks take thirty minutes at most, and I can do them even when I am exhausted.

The list did not solve my problem with flat weeks. What it changed was the way I finished them. Now I shut down the computer after getting done with one productive task.

But there is an even tougher question lurking behind. Some flat periods point to the flaw in the concept and the to-do list allows you to overlook this problem for quite some time. But I haven’t figured out how to distinguish one from another.

How do you do this? What is your date of reassessment, external advice or inner feeling? And what’s on your list for those days when you feel no motivation left?