These mental saboteurs could derail your reporting. Don’t let them.

There’s no end to the obstacles you’ll face as a reporter: Agencies that won’t cough up records. Sources who won’t give you the time of day. Competitors who will try to beat you while flacks spin you and targets try to get your story killed.

We do plenty to troubleshoot those external forces in conference sessions and J-school classes and here at Poynter.

But we don’t talk enough about the more quiet saboteurs — the ones living in your head. 

These brain buggers — let’s call them medulla oblongoblins — cloud your judgment and hold you back from doing your best work.

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