When people are depressed their energy, activity, and mood levels decrease in a spiral. The lower energy you feel, the less you do, the worse you feel emotionally, and the cycle continues. Being productive can help interrupt that negative spiral and turn it around. In this blog, I offer five strategies for how to break the cycle of feeling down and move forward: 1) As a general rule, try to have one source of accomplishment and one source of pleasure in each of your mornings, afternoons, and evenings. 2) Find the sweet spot between not working enough and expecting too much of yourself. 3) Alternate between easy, medium, and hard tasks. 4) Cultivate a deep-work habit to reduce your need for self-control. 5) Consider reaching out to MindLAB Neuroscience, for specialized programs to get you on the right path. Over the past several years, during and after Covid, I’ve seen many people go through an exorbitant amount of unsuccessful attempts to be productive and accomplish what they need to. To say the the pandemic didn’t have a large contribution to the levels of stress, depression and anxiety, people all over the world experienced, would be an understatement. It’s been difficult even for me, not to fall prey to these same states. However, I managed to stay consistently functional and productive by utilizing key methods from. my own practice and teachings in neuropsychology. If you’re depressed, anxious or just feeling down, your number one job is to look after yourself. Productivity is secondary to your mental health. However, learning how to be productive when you’re feeling down can help with depression and anxiety recovery. If your first reaction to this topic is that it feels like extra pressure, stick with me while I explain how and why being productive can help with depression. All emotions have an evolved purpose. Sad, depressed, and apathetic emotions cause us to pause, withdraw, and reflect deeply. This has self-protective aspects. Sometimes it’s wise to cocoon away from danger. Sometimes it’s wise to question what we find meaning in and not to keep plowing ahead doing the same things. But in depression, this self-protective, withdrawn, low-energy mode essentially gets stuck “on,” and becomes unhelpful. Instead of depressed or anxious feelings signaling the need to question whether what we’re doing with our lives is meaningful enough, everything starts to feel meaningless. Emotions are a signaling system. They help let you know when you’re safe versus in danger or heading in the right or the wrong direction. However, when they become prolonged, they lose their effectiveness as signals. When people are depressed their energy, activity, and mood levels decrease in a spiral. The lower energy you feel, the less you do, the worse you feel emotionally, and the cycle continues. Being productive can help interrupt that negative spiral and turn it around. Here’s where to start. 1. Schedule daily sources of accomplishment and pleasure not for feeling down. For mood health, we need two types of activities: those that provide a sense of accomplishment and those that provide pleasure. I incorporate a well-researched practice into my treatment, known as Behavioral Activation. As a general rule, try to have one source of accomplishment and one source of pleasure in each of your mornings, afternoons, and evenings. These can be very simple. For example, a source of pleasure could be sitting in a sunny window to drink your morning coffee. A sense of accomplishment could come from a workout, vacuuming under your bed, or a work task. Some people find it helpful to schedule activities in advance so they can more easily hit the recommendation of one pleasure activity and one mastery activity, per morning, afternoon, and evening. (You would end up with six per day — three for pleasure, and three for a sense of accomplishment.) If you’re depressed and/or anxious, the pleasure you get from activities will typically be blunted compared to normal. So, it may be a little harder to identify activities you would enjoy. This is another reason to schedule in advance. Start by brainstorming a list of the activities that provide either pleasure or a sense of mastery or accomplishment for you. Ask someone who knows you well to help if you feel stuck. This tip benefits productivity in direct and indirect ways. Activities that provide a sense of mastery or accomplishment are productive, and the structure of this approach will benefit your biological rhythms and your mood. 2. Reduce your usual workload. When you’re struggling with your mood and high-stress levels, attempting to work at 100% of your usual output is ill-advised. However, not working at all typically isn’t helpful either. Why? Regular work helps provide structure to your day. When you have the structure of regular activities, this helps regulate your biological rhythms, such as those related to eating and sleeping. Without the structure of regular activities, including work and socializing, those biological rhythms will become more dysregulated, which will tend to make depression worse. Fifty percent of your usual activity is a good sweet spot between not working enough and expecting too much of yourself. You may even find that your productivity doesn’t decrease that much with this approach. It will force you to prioritize deep work and other truly important tasks. Limiting yourself to 50% of your usual work will help you let go of activities that were only medium-productive to begin with. Fifty percent isn’t a hard and fast rule. You can choose a different number if you’d prefer, but adopt the principle. 3. Alternate between easy, medium, and hard tasks. Another element of good mood hygiene is that you shouldn’t do all easy tasks or all very hard tasks for long stretches. Where does this recommendation come from? Partly it comes from observations of how kids learn best, and people with developmental disabilities. For these groups, negative feelings often manifest as behavioral outbursts. I consistently see that behavior and happiness improve when people are not being under or over-challenged constantly. You … Continue reading How to Get Something Done When You’re Feeling Down