I spent a year in seventh grade at Whitney Young Magnet High School in Chicago before my family moved to Pennsylvania. At the start of the year the seventh graders were counselled to be working all the time, and efficiently—if you’re in the back of a car, you bring your textbooks and you work; if you’re on the bus, you bring your textbooks and you work; if you’re waiting in line at the grocery store, you bring your textbooks and you work. I think that year was the year that set me on track for the rest of my career—seventh grade was the year I learned how to work hard, high school and then undergrad at MIT was where I learned my limits and how to work through and around them, and grad school has been where I learned to self-motivate and direct that work (and I am very much still learning). MIT and grad school (and life) have also both taught me that work should not be my top priority, and that prioritizing work above all else does not end up being productive or happy for me in the end.

I don’t think I’ve ever been able to work through actual depression. But more minor or time-limited depression, or even burnout, if I can’t take time off, I have found I can work through, and I use the same strategies for standard low-motivation days or days when it’s just hard to get started or days when I’m scatterbrained or overwhelmed or can’t get myself to focus—Mondays, or days when I intend to work on a challenging task, or Tuesdays or Wednesdays or Thursdays or Fridays.

Here are ten strategies I use to work through burnout or mild depression or scatterbrainedness and other low-motivation moments—

I. Make it a priority to take good care of yourself.
II. Clarify your goals.
III. Reinforce your reward system.
IV. Rolling for Initiative: remove decisions.
V. Group tasks with similar tasks or with things you enjoy.
VI. Schedule as many tasks as you can.
VII. Join or form an accountability group.
VIII. Pomodoro.
IX. Do as much of a task as you’re willing to do.
X. Schedule breaks, accept your needs, and give yourself time.

I. Make it a priority to take good care of yourself.

Sometimes when I am having trouble focusing it helps me to first go through a checklist of my basic needs as an organism with a corporeal form:

1. drink a glass of water (1 minute)
2. clean my space, especially the space where I will be working—this tends to be speedier than I expect and have an outsized effect on how put-together I feel (5-30 minutes)
3. light exercise, like a jog if the weather is nice or spinning the stationary bike if the weather is not nice (10-20 minutes)
4. go for a short walk outside, especially with our housemate’s dog Pixel (10-20 minutes)
5. meditation (3-10 minutes)
6. eat a nice meal, especially a nice, large breakfast—preferably something with protein, carbs, fat, and some fruit and/or vegetables (20 minutes)
7. get enough sleep, ideally in one big-but-not-too-big chunk at night like a respectable adult human person (hours and hours)

This is my list of things I need to do to feel physically well. Maybe you have other things you need to do to feel physically well.

All of this takes some time, but I always feel at least a little better after going through it, even if I can only get myself to go through two or three of these items. The time it takes to do everything other than sleep is usually a few hours, which is a lot less time than I am capable of losing to unproductive unhappy scattered feelings. Even if I step away from productivity entirely and spend a day on this list and nothing else, I am usually far more productive with far less struggle when I return the next day.

One month when I was feeling very stuck I found the Fabulous app to be helpful in reminding me to prioritize my health and giving me nice little dopamine rewards for doing some of the above things.

I use Headspace for meditation. I like that there are meditation series, which give me some continuity and a feeling that I am building something, as well one-off meditations on specific topics that I might want to focus on in a given moment. I also like that I can customize the length of time I would like to meditate, because sometimes I feel up for meditating for ten minutes and sometimes I am only up for meditating for three minutes. Lately, I have been meditating on the commuter rail on my way to or from work.

Here are some photos of my fancy breakfasts:

I like pickles and brie as a combination, or brie and chopped prunes, or brussels sprouts chopped small and fried, or oats with bananas and blueberries or bananas and cinnamon, or oatmeal with jam, or toast with butter, or an omelet with some vegetables, or some deli turkey, or maybe some chocolate or some berries.

If you like pancakes and you like oatmeal and you think you might enjoy a combination of pancakes and oatmeal, here is a recipe I like:

1. Mash a banana, the more overripe the better.
2. Mix in an egg until you can’t tell the banana and egg apart.
3. Add between half a cup and a cup and a half of oats, or however much that the mixture looks to be about the consistency in the photo below and more or less kind of has some structure.
4. Add a bunch of cinnamon, however much cinnamon is the amount of cinnamon you like (I like cinnamon).
5. Heat some olive oil on a pan on medium heat.
6. Spoon some of the oat mixture onto the pan. I like to make four pancakes at a time.
7. Once the bottoms are solid enough that the pancakes can be flipped (you can tell by looking at the edges or poking under them with a spatula), flip them. Once the new bottoms are solid enough again, transfer to a plate.
8. Repeat until you’re out of oat mixture or patience.

I don’t usually make it through the entire amount in one meal, so I usually end up storing leftover cooked pancakes for the next day’s breakfast or snack.

This is a tricksy food. It does not seem like a large meal, but the dry-ish oats keep expanding once they’re in your stomach and absorbing moisture and you can feel nice and full for a long time and trick yourself into eating a good amount if eating is a challenge at the moment—and a banana and oats and an egg are not the worst thing to eat a lot of.

II. Clarify your goals.

The point of this exercise is take the disorganized, scary, overwhelming pile of tasks in your brain (or at least that is the natural shape of tasks in my brain) and convert them into an organized, approachable, actionable system that is not overwhelming and is actually usable.

I use Notion, which I first learned about from the current generation of MIT Admissions bloggers, specifically Kathleen E. ’23.

1. Digitally (easy to edit) or on paper (no distractions), write out everything you need to do or would like to do. This can be a very long list, and that is okay.
2. Decide which things can possibly be delayed or dropped, including meetings on your calendar. When I feel very overwhelmed, removing things from my plate helps me feel much better rather quickly. Send quick messages to the people who are counting on you for those things or are planning to meet with you and ask for extensions or to reschedule. This can be challenging, but do it and do it quickly and move on. People are usually very amenable to delays or reschedulings if those delays or reschedulings are clearly communicated and do not happen too often.
3. Decide which things you would like to focus on today. Make this set of things small and not overwhelming, maybe just one or two things. (You can always add more things later, if you get these done.) I recommend starting with things that are weighing on you—for me, that’s things that I have external pressure to complete, things that I worry I will let someone down by not doing. From these, start with the fastest things, because getting them done will feel like a weight off your shoulders and remove a bit of suffering and that will make the next task or set of tasks easier and the next day happier.
4. Start a new document or chunk of document with just those few things you are focusing on today. Write out in detail and in order every step you need to take in order to complete the tasks, breaking the tasks down into the smallest possible steps—small like “find and download file X,” or “write a paragraph about Y.”
5. Emphasize (highlight or make to have a dark font) those tasks that you can do now, that don’t depend on other tasks. De-emphasize (cover up or make to have a light font) those tasks that depend on things that haven’t happened yet.

This is your to-do list. Hopefully it is composed of small, doable tasks, and doesn’t contain any big tasks or big-picture goals. Try not to think about things that are not on this list.

I go through this process about weekly, on Sunday night or Monday morning, adjusting it as the week goes on or I gain new tasks or new information about my tasks or priorities. During the week I select small tasks from my large, digital to-do list for my daily, pen-and-paper to-do lists.

III. Reinforce your reward system.

I try to give myself some nice dopamine whenever I complete a task or move in a direction that I find productive or which contributes to my goals. The primary way I do this is in my to-do list notebook. My to-do list notebook is sacred to me. I buy a new one every year, identical but in a new color, and I carry it everywhere.

Every morning, or the night before if I can manage, I make a list of my tasks for the day, work tasks in a column on the left and self-care or other non-work tasks on the right. I include things I want to do that are not tasks but which I want to make sure I make time for, like calling my family or reading a chapter of a novel or building a Lego with my partner Cory. I write this list with my fancy flowy pens.

Every day, I select a gel pen for the day, sometimes a sparkly gel pen with glitter in the ink. I use the day’s gel pen to cross out tasks I complete. I cross out each task three times, with three lines, so I get to experience the joy of crossing out the task multiple times. When I complete a task that was not only on today’s list but also unfinished on a previous day’s list, I cross it out from each list it appears on, which means I get an extra rewards for completing a task that has taken me multiple days (or weeks) to get myself to do.

When I complete a task that brings me closer to a larger goal that is important to me, like a paper or another project I am working on, I give myself a shiny star. I also give myself a shiny star when I complete a task that is an important and challenging self-care task, like exercising or meditating. I stick the star in an empty part of the day’s page in my to-do list notebook, next to my to-do list. I write a short description of what I did to earn the star and I draw an arrow from the description to the star I earned.

I try to give myself my sparkly task cross-outs and star stickers as immediately as possible after I have completed a task, to make sure I associate the reward with the task.

I keep my to-do list notebook open next to my laptop all day as I work. Throughout the day I like to look over at my list and look at how nicely my gel pen cross-outs glitter in the light and how nicely my stars shine in the light. It is extra nice to get to see all my progress as glitter and sparkle; it is very, very satisfying.

In undergrad at MIT I kept my to-do lists in Habitica, formerly known as HabitRPG. You create a little virtual pixelated avatar. You list out your tasks on the site and when you complete your tasks your virtual avatar is rewarded. You can earn pretty outfits for your avatar and you can earn cute pixelated pets or steeds, some of them very exotic and fun, like octopuses (a famously exotic and fun animal) or mammoths and baby mammoths. You can go on special quests, which can last days or longer. It’s very motivating and fun. Habitica was very popular in my very nerdy dorm, Random Hall, and got me through a lot of challenging and overwhelming weeks at MIT. Habitica is also cited by one of my favorite authors, Mary Robinette Kowal, in the acknowledgments section of her latest book, The Relentless Moon.

Here is my Habitica avatar:

For some reason, another thing I have found helpful is Animal Crossing. I didn’t play video games as a child and am now very bad at them, but I do play Animal Crossing (and it is the only video game I play). I like that Animal Crossing rewards me immediately for doing small tasks. Somehow the feeling transfers over to real life—especially when the real-life thing I am doing feels like a slog with a distant or intangible reward, playing Animal Crossing seems to retrain my brain to remember that I should feel rewarded when I make progress. I found Animal Crossing bizarrely helpful for my motivation when I was studying for my qualifying exam, which felt endless. It’s an effect beyond just feeling refreshed from taking a break—Animal Crossing seems to remind me that positive feedback is possible and that I am capable of completing tasks.

Here I am being a grad student obsessed with little libraries and being comfy with books in Animial Crossing just like in real life. I am full of exactly no surprises.

IV. Rolling for Initiative: remove decisions.

We call this strategy Rolling for Initiative. I do it almost every day. I learned it from friends from MIT. It is one of my favorites.

I find Rolling for Initiative to be day-saving on days when I feel overwhelmed and can’t figure out how to prioritize, or when I feel unproductive and can’t get myself to feel willing to do anything. Sometimes, the thing that is holding me back from starting a task is that either the decision to start a task or the decision of which particular task to start becomes a huge hurdle. Often (almost always), the actual choice made matters a lot less than that some choice is made—and that there is some forward movement.

1. First, I make a list of the tasks I need to do, usually by clarifying my goals using the previous two methods. I make this list in my sacred to-do list notebook (above), but you can make your list anywhere. This list always also includes non-work and non-urgent tasks and self-care, like cleaning or laundry or meditation.
2. I also add activities that I am genuinely interested in doing, like reading a book or going outside for a walk.
3. Looking through my list, I identify the six tasks or activities that I find the most tolerable at the moment, that I actually feel able to engage in from whatever happens to be my current state. I number these tasks one through six. If I am not able to identify six tasks that feel tolerable, I give the most tolerable-feeling tasks two numbers.
4. I roll a dice. Whatever number it lands on is the task or activity I engage in.

I use my partner Cory’s fancy DnD and board game dice. I use a new die every day. It is a fun ritual to select the die that feels best today (and matches my to-do list gel pen for the day). Sometimes I have more than six tasks I want to choose from all at once (or selecting six tasks is itself too challenging a decision), and then I like to use a die with more faces.

Here is our very modest dice collection:

V. Group tasks with similar tasks or with things you enjoy.

Like in Rolling for Initiative, the goal here is to do whatever it takes to remove the challenge of starting a task.

If possible, pair something you don’t want to do with something you do want to do. If Cory and I want to run but also really don’t want to, we run to a nice destination. When we lived in Cambridge, Cory and I ran to Union Square Donuts once a week on the weekends. We ran and we got donuts at the end. I also pair laundry or cleaning or exercise with television. Lately I have been watching documentaries: on eugenics and Prohibition and Mark Twain and Hemingway and tuberculosis. If I’m watching a documentary it is easier to exercise or clean or do another task that does not actually require my eyes and ears.

You can also decrease the challenge of starting a task by removing the “start” part of it by tacking it onto the end of a similar task. If you need to write a bunch of emails, write a bunch of emails, instead of writing each email on its own. Task-switching is really hard for me—I find it a lot easier to do a task that is similar to the preceding task I did. (Of course, if “write a bunch of emails” as a task is overwhelming, then maybe just write one.)

VI. Schedule as many tasks as you can.

You can also make it easier to start a task by turning it into a routine. Where possible, try to do things at about the same time or in the same sequence every day. If you run or go for a walk right before lunch, then it becomes easier to do it. It helps remove the decision, which makes it much easier to get started.

One way to do this is to schedule something with other people.

VII. Join or form an accountability group.

On weekdays I meet up with a group of other trainees over zoom for a little more than an hour at 9:30am. We are all overscheduled, so there are between two and four of us on any given day, and there are four of us in total. We start by asking each other how the previous day went and setting goals for the following 45 minutes. Then we leave the zoom meeting and work independently on the goals we set. We meet back up at 10:30 and report on how the 45 minutes went. Finally, we set goals for the rest of the day. In addition to setting productive goals, we also try to each set a wellness goal.

We started meeting as part of a short-term accountability group organized by Harvard’s Academic Resource Center in September 2020. When that short term ended we kept meeting. Our first meeting was Monday, September 14, 2020. We’ve met almost every workday for 17 months.

On my least productive days, I don’t get anything done after our meeting ends, but at least I move forward during that hour. Accountability group usually breaks through the difficulty of starting work in the morning and always breaks through the difficulty of starting work for the week. While I still have days when I don’t get much done, the stretch of “dark” time is much shorter. I no longer have entire weeks when I don’t make progress toward my goals.

Accountability group has also made me better at setting realistic goals and estimating how long a task will take. I get daily practice setting both 45-minute goals and goals for a day.

Not to mention that the group has become my very good friends and an important part of my support network, and that I look forward to us seeing each other and starting our day together.

VIII. Pomodoro.

Pomodoro is also helpful for getting me to start working on a task (or start working at all). In the Pomodoro technique, you work for a set length of time (I set my sprints to 20 minutes). Then you take a break for a short amount of time (I set my breaks to 5 minutes). Then you work, then you take a break, and so on. After a certain number of sprints, you get to take a longer break (I set my long breaks to 15 minutes). During your sprints, you turn on “do not disturb,” don’t open email or social media, and put your phone away. It is much easier for me to resist distractions when I know I can be comfortably distracted by them without guilt in 20 minutes.

Pomodoro means that instead of approaching a whole task, I approach the concept of working on it for 20 minutes. Sometimes it is easier for me to convince myself to work on a large or ambiguous task for 20 minutes than it is to convince myself to work on it until some benchmark, especially if the task is ambiguous enough that there aren’t any benchmarks. Those 20 minutes are usually enough time for me to become engaged in a task (and then I just keep working), understand an ambiguous task enough that I can break it down into well-defined smaller tasks or ask for help, and identify and possibly resolve the barriers that were making the task difficult to approach.

I use the Be Focused desktop app. I like that I can make a to-do list and select which item I am focusing on for a sprint, and I like that the app tracks how many sprints I have dedicated to each task. I also like the sounds it makes. My friends from accountability group recommend the Bear Focus Timer app.

IX. Do as much of a task as you’re willing to do.

Sometimes a task is too large for me to feel willing to do, even if it is not a large task. Sometimes I’m able to make progress by being okay with doing one small part of the task, whatever that small part is. For example, I might not feel up for doing laundry, but I can get myself to put all the laundry in my laundry bag and leave the laundry bag by the door. Or cleaning the kitchen might feel impossible, but cleaning a small part of the kitchen feels doable. Or I might feel up for working on something for just 15 minutes, and then I let myself work on it for just 15 minutes and pick it back up later. At least it is progress and that is what matters.

X. Schedule breaks, accept your needs, and give yourself time.

Finally, I find it helpful for my productivity to not be productive all the time. I think it is important to schedule breaks. I think it is very important that these breaks are scheduled—that they happen regardless of whether or not you have completed your tasks and that they are not something you have to earn. During these breaks, you should do things you actually enjoy, not things you think you should enjoy. (I once again recommend Animal Crossing.)

In addition to vacations, I give myself a break for a full day every week by observing Shabbat: every week, I try not to work between sunset on Friday until after sunset on Saturday. I don’t observe particularly strictly, but I try to only do the things I genuinely want to do and I try not to do or even think about anything related to my job. I also write planned breaks and other things I am looking forward to into the monthly calendar view of my to-do list notebook.

Similarly, often when I am having trouble motivating myself to be productive (especially if it’s not the start of the week), I just need a break, preferably guilt-free. It is hard to face that I am not going to be productive for some chunk of time when I had hoped to work, but feeling guilty and struggling usually is not as pleasant or productive an experience as calling it earlier and trying again in a few hours or the next morning.

Things you can purchase:

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My sacred to-do list notebook is a Moleskine daily planner, this year in green. (I buy whatever color is cheapest in December, which gives me a nice variety of colors from year to year.)

I write my to-do lists with black 0.5 mm uni-ball pens. I also use these pens for line art, and otherwise I do not use them. They are my sacred to-do list and art pens.

I cross out completed to-do list items with gel pens, usually but not always glittery. I keep them in their nice carrying case they came in. I took out the ones I didn’t love (and left them in a little library) so that my daily choice of gel pen would not have any possible wrong answers. I do not use these gel pens for anything other than for crossing out to-do list items. They are my sacred to-do list gel pens.

I also have an absolutely absurd collection of shiny star stickers in different colors and sizes. Lately I have been using almost exclusively the smallest star stickers. I keep the two or three or four sticker sheets I am currently using in my to-do list notebook and I keep the rest in the pocket of my gel pens’ carrying case.

Finally, dice.