How to get out of your head
Updated: Sep 2, 2022
From personal experience, I can say that remote work and staying indoors has posed the following challenges:
People have become overworked
It has become difficult to segregate work and private life
We have become mentally fat with work concerns
Here, I share with you 3 things that have worked for me in these past 14 months of working remotely:
Meditation and Journaling in the morning
In his book, Naval Ravikant describes the mind as a "drunken monkey" that wants to wreak havoc. This is a comically true analogy. I have found that meditating in the morning for 15-30 minutes followed by journaling can work well to hit a reset on your brain and have it fresh for a new day.
Useful apps:
Meditation: Headspace
Journaling: Day One
Exercise when you become too emotional at work
It is good to be emotional - i.e - to feel what you're doing. However, there is a thin line between not caring and potentially caring too much. When you feel that work annoyances or stresses are taking control, use exercise to break out. I find a short and crisp HIIT workout to be useful. This has the following benefits:
A pumping heart releases endorphins that make you feel good
An elevated heart rate makes you re-evaluate the importance of breathing and life in general. This can help put things in perspective.
Completing a moderately strenuous workout gives you a feeling of accomplishment. This feeling then slingshots into your post-workout tasks.
Useful apps:
Home workout: Official 7 minute workout by J&J.
Watch something familiar
This happened to me recently. Watching a familiar setting with familiar characters can make you feel "at home". When you end up mouthing the dialogues before the on-screen character, it can almost transport you in time to the exact moment when you saw the movie/series for the first time. This can prove to be freeing and reassuring.
Note: This is not a sponsored post and does not intend to promote the mentioned applications in any way.