take a walk outside. just 10 minutes can really boost your mood.
vent. write in a journal, make a voice memo, whatever. have a safe space where you can express your thoughts and feelings.
think about past challenges you’ve overcome. you survived those, you can survive this too.
reach out to your support system. do not isolate yourself. human beings need social connections.
sometimes it’s okay to put some things off until tomorrow. in the grand scheme of things, life goes on. depending on your situation, taking a break might be the best thing for you right now.
This is for those times when you really desperately want to be productive and get things done but you can’t focus and you just want to sleep but you didn’t do anything today so you feel shitty.
if you can, please just go to sleep (I do get that sometimes you feel so shitty about how little work you got done that you can’t sleep, but if you can, please do it and approach tomorrow with a fresh start)
plan out what tomorrow is going to look like. I will break it down by task, for example: 6:00 wake up, 6:05 work out 6:15 shower, 6:30 make tea, 6:40 start work, 7:30 break etc. This will 1) help you feel better about not getting anything done 2) can help you be more productive tomorrow.
if you have things to do that are easy/low brain power, do them. These are things like printing out work, scanning stuff, tidying your kitchen. getting these little things out of the way can make a HUGE difference later
if you can, just read over your material. Don’t even try to understand, just read it. Tomorrow when you come back to try and actually learn it, you will already be a little familiar and it can speed things up for you
eat something, drink something, and see if it makes you feel better- many times when i’m “unable” to go on, I eat a meal and drink a glass or two of water and magically I feel great again
try doing a workout- sometimes it just makes the exhaustion worse, but if you need to stay up later (shoutout to my fellow 6:30 pm bedtime pals) it can stretch time a little bit, and sometimes wakes up your brain. It’s also good for you and can make your sleep go better
DONT DRINK COFFEE. or tea. no caffeine. you are already tired, it’s not going to fix anything, its just going to make you jittery and sad. it’s also going to upset your sleep schedule and make the tired worse for tomorrow.
lastly- just go to bed. pushing through true exhaustion is not going to help you or anyone else. anything you try and learn is going to float right out of your head, and it can lead to burnout which will make everything worse. Please just sleep
