Navigating yourself when in a down state is one of the most valuable possible skills. And, extremely difficult.
One of the things that leads to snakebitten days is a convergence of negative events. Most people who develop healthy work habits and lifestyles can shrug off one or two things wrong. But when a mix of successes, accidents, and failures hits at the same time, you can lose time to the snakebitten day.
Navigating those days into being successful is really key.
Here's what happened yesterday:
*Wake up at 4:30AM (normal) after going to bed at 6:50PM (slightly early, 9.5 hours sleep).
*The day before had been extremely productive, and also a bit stressful as I took on a ton of decisionmaking and pushed a lot of production out. Very frequently, the day after a hugely successful day I'll be flat.
*Perhaps due to tiredness, or being focused on celebration, or just dumb accident, I didn't clean up my computer before sleeping. I try to close as many of the documents, books, browser tabs, etc, before going to bed, so my computer starts off clean in the morning. Instead, I had a mix of mildly interesting reading and half-finished work open.
*I got an important early-morning email saying the gentleman could connect at 5AM (30 minutes after I woke) which I very much wanted to do. I said yes to that.
So, the stage is now set: Yesterday was highly productive and stressful, I didn't clean up and set the stage correctly for the next morning, and I just said yes to a very early morning call.
What happens next?
*The call goes well.
*By accident, or dumb luck, or whatever, I then start reading and clicking around on those tabs I left open. Instead of going through my normal routine of creative work for an hour or two, then take a break from it and do my morning routine (brush teeth, shower, stretch, meditate, plan, etc) like I normally do in the mornings before having my first calls usually at 8AM or 9AM, instead I get off my routines.
*Very quickly two hours pass, and now if I want to run my day semi-normally I need to abbreviate my routines heavily and head out to the cafe where I'll take my calls and work for a few hours before going to the gym. I have to walk very fast to be on time to my consulting call at 8AM.
So, here's where we're at: I set myself up very slightly poorly the night before, I leave distractions scattered around, I seize a quick early-morning opportunity that disrupts my routines, and then I get lost in the void. Now, I've got to hurry -- I quickly brush my teeth and stretch, but don't have time to shower before heading out to the cafe. And I've got to hurry instead of walk leisurely while listening to smart audio.
*The first call goes normally and goes well.
*I have another call after that, and the gentleman there turns out to be late and then cancels.
This is a double-hosed situation. One of the few things that consistently throws me off (though I've been getting better about it) are people being late or canceling.
I look at my calendar, and I've still got two more important phonecalls in 90 minutes and 150 minutes from now. This is kind of yucky. It's enough time I don't want to waste it, but not enough to safely bank on starting and finishing an entire creative milestone... and I've found often 80%+ complete creative work never gets finished and has a huge demoralizing effect. IE: For high creativity work, If I don't have enough time to get it to a completed state, I try to do something else.
So I had an intense day the day before, didn't get moving on creative work or nail my routine in the morning, I hurried to get here, had a call, another call canceled, and around then I think to myself, "I'm having a bad day. I'll be lucky to just salvage today." I thought the likelihood of getting in any high-quality work was very low.
I was kind of starting to go down the rat-hole.
This is also where I'm very pleased that I recognized what was happening. And maybe there's some useful lessons for you here.
I got up away from my computer and walked to a different table with a notebook and a pen.
There's a state that's very useful that I try to reach daily that I call "Reflective Control."
My definition: "Reflective Control is when you're firmly off autopilot, in a high-positive and high-willpower state, and are able to take action."
So there's four components. Off-autopilot (hence, getting up from the computer to think), high positivity, high will, and able to flip action on and direct oneself after making a decision.
It's a very good place to be.
So I asked myself: "How am I feeling?"
I looked inside and wrote down on the paper:
Will: 45 [out of 100]
Positivity: 20 [out of 100]
So my willpower didn't seem really low -- below average but not terrible -- but my positivity was shot. Not doing my routines, hurrying to the cafe, didn't shower, haven't meditated, call got cancelled... I was feeling negatively.
I was already off autopilot and reflective (something I've been practicing a lot -- noticing when I'm down, and breaking off from the distraction/negative habit loop; it gets easier with practice). That's 1/4th the battle.
I said, "Hmm, there's one way I could go about this. I could write down everything that must get done today [there wasn't much] and brute-force my way through it, then lift weights and take the rest of the day besides my calls off..." -- and I considered that, and I noted down the work I needed to do.
And I noted that was an option, thought some more, and decided, "Okay, what are some little tiny actions I can take to get my will and action-taking momentum up, and get my mood up towards the high positives?"
I had a few tiny little things that fit the bill.
I try to do daily followup. Today I wrote a very short note to an old friend who I dearly like. No pressure, no thinking. Nice.
I set a timer and meditated for five minutes.
Good, nice.
I usually look at my goals daily. So I went to do that, and then decided to write and expand on the topic of character-building, participating in a civic fashion, and self-control and self-direction.
After finishing that, I felt terrific all of a sudden.
It's like the floodgates broke, and I dove into my most critical and leveraged work, and got it done.
I then had a knowledge share social call that went great (he gave me permission to write up the notes; it was on the topic of project management and I learned a ton for GGW and life in general -- I'll write it up later). I then had a consulting call that went well enough, even though my client lost internet after about 50 minutes thus abruptly ending it a bit early.
After playing with the tech and shooting a "let's reconnect once your internet is unbroken" email, I went on another chain of work, and finished most of what I wanted to do for the rest of this week, and did some more creative work besides.
I can't tell you what an incredibly good feeling this is, because this is exactly the sort of day that would've sunk me not too long ago.
Takeaways for me:
*Proper setup the day before is key; don't leave distractions out
*Be very careful when doing things off-routine; immediately re-calibrate
*Try not to be scurrying around in the morning; it risks scattering the mind
*The training into recognizing when on negative autopilot is working; this has taken a while to get down but is incredibly satisfying (the flipside is it was incredibly frustrating when I was barely not able to deal with it previously; if you don't have this ability and are undertaking to get it, be aware that when you're almost there it's incredibly frustrating, and be ready for that)
*I acknowledged where I was and put concrete numbers on it which was very helpful. It made me realize that my will was okay -- not great, but okay -- and the thing that was holding me back was negative attitude at the moment
*I wrote down a realistic option of how the day could be salvaged before looking for another option
*I chipped away at it to look to rebuild momentum and mood
*It worked! Magnificent to see. Dashing off an email to a friend, meditating, checking off a couple boxes in an easy fashion, and writing on Goals some.
*I'd already defined out my most important thing a moment before, so I transitioned right into that
*I then kept the momentum going.
Maybe a landmark day for me. I turned a "this is going to be a bottom 20%" type day into a top 20% type day. I hope there's some useful lessons in here for you, and I hope I don't come across too pleased with myself here -- it was precisely a situation I'd fallen short in many times before, and being able to short-circuit a convergence of events and a bad mood and turning it into production and creativity felt really, really wonderful.