How to Be Productive When You Just Don’t Feel Like It

5 Tips for Taking Action Through Depressed and Negative Moods

Sometimes, world domination seems so eminent, I can feel the power and potential coursing through my veins.

I’m ready. Bring it on.

Other times, it seems like a distant daydream — almost laughable.

One of the most common reasons I feel this second way — a major personal barrier to engaging in purposeful work toward my goals, is feeling blocked by a depressed, anxious, negative mood.

How can I do anything, let alone conquer the world, when I feel like crap?

Lately I’ve written a lot about what I call “resistance,” which is, in short, the dark mental energy that blocks or holds us back from working toward a higher goal.

Resistance is an evil, savage beast that will stop at nothing to sabotage your personal growth.

As much as we want to believe it’s an outside force that cannot be stopped, the truth is that resistance comes from within you, and is strengthened and perpetuated by you.

This is actually good news — it means we have the power to recognize the beast in action, understand it’s ways, and learn to beat it back, time and time again, to move forward toward our goals.

But first, we must recognize when it’s got us in its grip — and believe me, it’s a tricky bastard, so you’ll need some help.

Here are 5 tips for beating resistance when it takes the form of a negative, depressed mood:

1) Recognize and label your mood

Psychotherapist and author Sandra L. Brown writes:

“You cannot acknowledge and change what you do not label and describe.”

Many people are perpetually held back by negative and depressed moods because they simply aren’t aware they’re in a funk.

Resistance loves to creep over you unnoticed, whispering things like, “This whole day has been awful, and nothing has gone right for me. There’s no possible way I’m getting on that treadmill.”

Before you know it, your reaching for chips and Netflix — or a cigarette, or whatever will take your mind off how crappy you feel.

What if, instead of reaching for the chips, you closed your eyes, took a deep breath, and quietly asked yourself, “How do I feel right now?”

An immediate answer will probably bubble up — something like “sad” or “angry.” But if you continue to breathe and inquire with “Why?” you’ll start to peel back the layers of your feelings until you know what you’re working with.

You might end up with something like “I feel afraid that I’m going to fail at this.” Or “I’m uncomfortable with being alone.”

Once you figure out what’s really bothering you, you can take it a step further and ask “How does this feel in my body?”

You might notice your chest or throat is tight, your stomach is churning or you feel heavy and drained of energy.

Try to let go of the urge to “fix” the negative feelings, just breathe, and feel them as they are.

If you regularly practice self-awareness (also called mindfulness), you can recognize and label negative emotions and their corresponding bodily sensations, before they can stop you from being productive.

Just another reminder: Don’t attempt to rid yourself of your bad mood, or repress your thoughts — this won’t work, and will undoubtedly cause more agitation. Just allow the mood to be as it is, and sit with it for a moment.

2) View your thoughts for what they are — just thoughts

So now you’ve successfully identified resistance in action, but in order for you to push past it, you’ll need to start viewing your thoughts in a very different light — one that you may not be used to.

I have a friend with OCD who has a tattoo that says:

“Thoughts are just thoughts.”

I love it.

People who are prone to obsessing over negative thoughts can benefit tremendously from learning that:

A. Thought are just thoughts, they are not always true — and are often completely false

B. You are not your thoughts

C. Your thoughts have no power over your actions

When you start to feel a negative emotion in your body — chest tightening, stomach sinking, heart beating — those physical sensations are usually accompanied by a steady stream of negative, fearful thoughts.

For me, resistance is at the top of it’s game when I sit down to write something new. I usually notice the physical sensation first — a feeling of heaviness washing over me, a sinking feeling in my stomach. Then come the negative thoughts:

“I’m a shitty writer. The decent posts I’ve written in the past were only flukes, and it’s only a matter of time before I run out of ideas and talent.”

Let’s dissect this little ditty.

Is this true? I’m a shitty writer — hmm…that seems like quite the subjective judgment, nothing that can be proven. As for the last part about running out of ideas and talent, those are just downright lies! Dangerous ones.

The truth is the opposite — the most I practice writing, the more ideas I will generate, and the better writer I’ll become. Sure, I’ll go through dry spells, but that’s just part of the gig.

The truth is that resistance is trying to get me to stop practicing, because the more work I churn out, the more I am exposed to possible criticism.

Resistance despises vulnerability. It doesn’t understand that vulnerability is the only path to a fulfilling life.

Sometimes it’s worth it to analyze a persistent thought like this. But most of the time, you should simply identify a negative thought, label it as just a thought — one that is not necessarily true, and move straight to action.

Steven C Hayes, author of the excellent book, Get Out of Your Mind, and Into Your Life, says it like this:

“What we need to do is look at a thought, rather than from a thought.”

In other words, stop identifying with your thoughts. Look at them, as you would a pretty flower, or an interesting looking insect — with detached curiosity.

For example: when you have a thought like “I’m a failure,” recognize it and change it to “I am having the thought that I am a failure.” This disconnects you from the thought, which is quite liberating.

3) Don’t Think — Just Do

At this point it seems we’ve spent quite some time paying attention to our negative thoughts and physical sensations — and sometimes it’s necessary to address them through several minutes of mindfulness.

But most of the time, it’s best to get through steps 1 and 2 as quickly as possible, and just throw yourself back into your work. You’ll get faster at completing these steps the more practice you have with them.

I’m going to say this once, and it’s important, so pay attention:

You must not dwell on your negative thoughts and moods.

This is where people get stuck. This is a place where precious time is sucked into the abyss if we’re not careful.

It’s okay to have negative moods, and thoughts. It’s normal, and it happens to everyone — there is no need to feel bad about feeling bad. Blogger Mark Manson writes a great post about this — check it out when you get a chance.

When bad moods lurk: we identify, we feel, we label, and we disconnect.

Then, we move.

Now that you’ve successfully caught yourself being held back by your negative thoughts and mood, it’s time to get to work.

Just focus your mind on the task at hand, and when your mind wanders, direct it right back to what you need do. You may cycle through steps 1 and 2 throughout your work, especially when you hit a road block and self-doubt creeps in — but do it quickly. Tell yourself out loud:

“Okay, bad mood, negative thoughts…got it. Now, back to work!”

4) Connect with your why

Resistance hates forgoing momentary pleasure in favor of long-term success. It would much rather treat your crappy mood with chips, Netflix, alcohol or cigarettes. It hates to see you suffering in the moment, and wants to help — though ironically, it perpetuates your suffering by keeping you right where you’re at in life.

Doing work sucks.

It doesn’t feel good. Waking up at 4:30am to write before I go to work feels awful — I’m tired, my body and brain are screaming for more sleep, a damned break for once.

It sucks so bad, that I wouldn’t do it at all if the suffering didn’t have meaning for me. If I didn’t have a why.

I get up and write because I have a strong desire to share my ideas with the world and connect with others. It’s a desire that when not acted on, slowly eats away at my soul.

That’s my why. I remind myself of this when resistance is strong. When it wants me to “Just relax for once — take a break, writing is hard!”

Exercising for the first time in a while, really sucks. Self-conscious and negative thoughts abound — combined with the feelings of being physically weak and sore as you push yourself through one more mile. But if you’re doing this because you want to reverse your diabetes and high blood pressure, so you can live a longer life for your children, it’s worth it.

When you’re caught up in the suffering that hard work brings, remind yourself of your why.

5) Rebuke the idea of perfectionism

Hard work is ugly. The road to a higher goal is not straight, narrow and pristine. It’s misshapen, meandering and riddled with mistakes.

You wouldn’t know this from looking at Pinterest, Instagram or certain life-coaching blogs. Or the yoga teacher next door with the perfect body and the seemingly “zen” attitude.

When resistance takes the form of perfectionism, it’s almost impossible to finish what we’ve started, and sometimes to move at all — especially when starting from square one.

Perfectionism tells us we must be certain of everything — we must know it all before we take the first step. It impedes purposeful action by convincing us to read 10 books on the subject before writing a word.

It also tells us if it’s not going to be perfect, it’s not worth doing at all. If I can’t be the fittest, healthiest person on the planet — the one on the cover of the magazine, I don’t even want to bother with meal planning, or working out. It’s all or nothing.

I’ll often catch myself stalled in my writing, and I realize it’s because I’m expecting every sentence to be perfect and ready for publication — when I should be getting raw thoughts on paper that can be put in order later on.

Social worker and author Brene Brown writes:

“You don’t have to be perfect, just engaged, and committed to aligning values with action.”

I value creativity, honesty, and hard, meaningful work. As long as my actions are aligned with these values, it doesn’t matter how messy or imperfect those actions are.

If you value health, it doesn’t matter if you run for 15 minutes or 15 miles — you are taking action in the service of your values, that’s what matters.

To recap:

Bad moods suck. And they are a natural part of human existence, so we’re stuck with them. Any attempt to rid ourselves of them just causes more obsession and suffering. This means we must find a way to carry them with us toward our goals. Some helpful tips:

1) Identify and label your moods

2) Look at your thoughts rather than from them (non-identification)

3) Move quickly into action

4) Remind yourself of your why

5) Rebuke perfectionism

You don’t have to be or feel perfect, but you must work. Author Steven Pressfield writes:

“When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us…We become like a magnetized rod, attracting iron fillings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”

He’s right.

Mood or no mood, we must find a way to do the work in the service of our deeply held values.

This isn’t easy. It’s painfully imperfect — and your brain will constantly tell you it’s impossible.

Refuse to believe it, and move forward.

The world is waiting.