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Tag: Mental Training

  • 5 Simple Strategies I Use To Be Super Productive After Work

    5 Simple Strategies I Use To Be Super Productive After Work

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    Improve your life, not just your performance on the job.

    You are not your work.

    You know that, but like lots of men, you don’t treat yourself that way. You spend your best waking hours at the job, come home exhausted, and have no energy and time left to work on yourself.

    I don’t judge this – it’s what society encourages and normalizes.

    But if you’re honest with yourself, you know that if you spent just a fraction of your time and energy on being productive after work:

    • You’d look in the mirror again and be proud of how fit you are
    • You could achieve the dreams you’ve had for so long
    • You could be a better dad and husband

    But when you come home, you’re just too tired and don’t have enough time. All you want to do is relax after a long, hard day.

    “Don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” – Dolly Parton

    The truth is, the situation won’t change by itself. You’ll have to figure out other ways to make time for your self-improvement.

    Here are five of them.

    Use This Powerful Physics Principle To Your Advantage

    Physics can teach you a lot about life.

    For example, the energy needed to get an object in motion is much higher than the one needed to keep it in motion.

    This is true for life as well – overcoming initial friction often takes a big push.

    • Getting up from the sofa to go to the gym
    • Turning off the TV and picking up a book
    • Dropping your ego and learning something you aren’t good at yet

    In our minds, there’s a massive mountain to move. We often feel like if we don’t do a lot of something, it isn’t worth it.

    You can reduce this initial friction by committing to just five minutes.

    Even though I’ve been working out regularly for over a decade, I still have days where I don’t want to go to the gym. When that happens, I commit to only one exercise. I allow myself to leave after if I want to.

    By the time I’ve completed it, I’m already warmed up, hyped, and in the flow of lifting weights. Paradoxically, it becomes harder to stop than it is to keep going – this is another physics principle known as Newton’s First Law:

    “An object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an external force.”

    All you need is the initial push. Make the perceived challenge small enough so you can get started easily. Then, you just have to keep rolling.

    Five minutes is all it takes.

    Don’t Lose Your Momentum

    painting of dominoes tipping over

    Laziness is a luxury.

    There’s the adage “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” It’s true. During times in my life when I didn’t have much to do, the simplest tasks could overwhelm me.

    I just wasn’t in the mode of doing anything.

    However, when I worked full-time, did a side project, and went to the gym six days a week, time seemed to magically appear out of thin air. Looking back at it now, I realize it was because I didn’t make time for being lazy.

    Instead of heading home after work, I went straight to the gym. Instead of plopping down on the couch after, I warmed up my meal prep. Instead of leaving the dishes in the sink, I cleaned them up straight away.

    This doesn’t mean you should stuff your schedule to the brim and burn yourself out.

    Just don’t lose the momentum – do things while you’re still in “doing mode” from work. It seems harder, but makes it easier.

    Once you’re done with working on yourself, you can fully enjoy your relaxation.

    Turn It Into A Shoulder-By-Shoulder Activity

    Ever heard of shoulder-by-shoulder activities?

    It’s when you’re doing something by yourself, but with each other – like going for a hike with your buddy or hitting the gym with a training partner.

    Psychologist Paul Wright observed men tend to be more comfortable with these shoulder-by-shoulder activities than women.

    I’ve noticed it myself – doing things with others adds a level of accountability, commitment, and enjoyment. If you have a slow day, your partner can get you up to speed – and vice versa.

    So instead of tackling everything as a solo mission, get someone to do it with you.

    • Read with your partner on the couch
    • Watch self-improvement courses with a friend
    • Do house or yard work with your kids

    Often, the other person doesn’t even have to do much.

    I’m perfectly happy with my partner sitting next to me reading a book while I’m working. Them just being there can be enough motivation, accountability, and support to get me going.

    Walking the path can be tough, especially when you’re exhausted – so get someone to walk with you.

    Use These Approaches To Deal With All The Small Tasks

    I love the German language because of all the quotes and sayings.

    One of my favorites?

    “Small animals also shit.” (There’s a reason we call ourselves the country of poets and thinkers – this sentence isn’t it.)

    The English equivalent would be “many a little makes a mickle.”

    Small things are often overlooked because they’re, well, small. But if you collect enough of them, they pile up and become a tough mountain to climb. Before you know it, you have a to-do list that’s longer than Santa Claus’s beard after a long night of drinking with the elves.

    The good news?

    If you approach these tasks properly, you’ll plow through them in no time and feel great for accomplishing so much.

    Here are my favorite techniques:

    • Batch processing
      Group similar tasks together – for example, anything that’s exercise-related, e.g. finding a gym, creating a meal plan, and watching a video on proper form. It’s much easier to do them all because you’re already in the right mode.
    • Two-minute-rule
      If you can do something in under two minutes, do it right away. This gives you a quick win instead of wasting mental bandwidth by keeping it in your mind.

    Small things can add up – use that to your advantage.

    Hack The Motivation-Friction-Equation

    All human behavior follows the same equation.

    Motivation > friction = you do it.

    Friction > motivation = you don’t do it.

    Being tired, having big tasks you don’t like, and not knowing where to start create friction. Having energy, doing what you enjoy, and an enjoyable outcome increase motivation. If your willingness to do something is bigger than the resistance associated, you’ll do it – simple as that.

    This also explains why it’s so hard to do things after work. You have little energy, willpower, and drive. Your motivation is as low as the shawty with the apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur in Flo Rida’s song.

    I’m living in Colombia right now and although I’ve committed to taking Spanish classes, doing them after a long workday was a pain in the neck.

    Then, I found a learning website that has interesting documentaries and entertaining videos with native speakers explaining why some penguins’ poop is pink in Spanish, sorted by language level.

    It made learning a breeze because this skyrocketed my motivation – I was looking forward to the videos every day.

    Make your tasks fun and you’ll be much more likely to do them:

    • Turn on some music while you’re doing household chores
    • Make it a game of seeing how much you can get done in 20 minutes
    • Combine it with something you enjoy (e.g. watch your favorite show while doing cardio, have a nice tea while reading, etc.)
    • Set challenges (e.g. read 20 pages) and reward yourself immediately (with a nice drink or your favorite tunes)

    The higher your motivation, the more friction you can overcome.

    How To Stay Productive After Work And Focus On Your Self-Improvement

    There’s more to your weekdays than your job.

    The last thing you want to do is spend all your energy in the office and then survive through the rest of your waking hours until it’s time to sleep and start the whole cycle anew.

    Use these five strategies to make sure you invest as much energy into yourself as into your day job.

    1. Make getting started easy by committing to just five minutes.
    2. Keep the momentum going after work.
    3. Turn your tasks into shoulder-by-shoulder activities.
    4. Use batch processing and immediate action to take care of the small stuff.
    5. Add something that makes your chores fun.

    Invest in yourself – it will pay off for the rest of your life.

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    Moreno Zugaro

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  • This Unusual Approach Helps Me Beat Procrastination 99% Of The Time

    This Unusual Approach Helps Me Beat Procrastination 99% Of The Time

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    One of the biggest lessons I learned from spending eight days in total darkness.

    This sounds paradoxical, but…

    …I learned one of my biggest lessons about stopping procrastination by doing nothing for eight days.

    Last year, I spent over a week in a darkness retreat, where I sat in pitch-black without anything to do. Okay, that’s not 100% correct – I actually did a lot. A lot of feeling.

    Because there’s nothing to distract yourself, you have to sit with whatever emotion comes up. It’s an incredibly tough, yet very healing experience. But what does that have to do with procrastination?

    A lot.

    Procrastination can be super frustrating because you:

    • Don’t move forward
    • Feel stuck and get mad at yourself
    •  Don’t reach your goals, which frustrates you even more and starts the whole cycle anew

    “Procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, not a time management problem.” – Dr. Tim Pychyl, professor of psychology and member of the Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa

    This means the reasons behind your procrastination aren’t what you thought they were.

    The True Reasons Why You Procrastinate Aren’t What You Think

    Forget everything you think you know about procrastination for a minute.

    Let go of all the beliefs you have about it – that you’re lazy, not disciplined, can’t focus, are bad with schedules, or whatever story you’ve been telling yourself.

    Instead, look at procrastination from a different angle. If you want to know why you aren’t doing something, look at what doing it brings up in you:

    • Discomfort because it’s hard or you don’t enjoy it (e.g. going to the gym)
    • Fear of failure because you might not be good at it (e.g. learning a new skill)
    • Fear of success because it would add more responsibility (e.g. having to deliver value to the clients of your side hustle)

    To evade these uncomfortable emotions, your subconscious presents you with a simple solution.

    “I’ll just watch one YouTube video, scroll a little bit, do this other thing…”

    “Procrastination makes easy things hard and hard things harder.” – Mason Cooley

    This means that instead of managing your time better, you need to regulate your emotions better.

    You need to learn to deal with the fear, discomfort, stress, and everything that comes with doing what you need to do.

    This will allow you to dive head-first into it rather than finding cheap excuses and easy ways out.

    Here’s how.

    How To Stop Procrastinating – By Doing Nothing

    When I was in the darkness retreat, I did not have an easy way out.

    There was no YouTube, no Instagram, and no other things I could do – all I could do was sit with the feeling.

    To beat procrastination, you can do the same.

    Instead of grabbing whatever distraction is within reach, take a deep breath and stay where you are.

    All you need are five minutes in which you don’t allow yourself to do anything but the thing – or feel what comes up.

    This will cause either of two things to happen:

    • You feel through the discomfort, fear, and other emotions until you release them and get to work
    • The discomfort of doing nothing becomes so big that you start working on the thing instead

    This requires a heightened awareness so you can stop yourself before the distraction.

    It’s okay if you don’t make it on the first try. When I started doing this, I sometimes only noticed after half an hour of scrolling through my phone what I was doing. Then, I pulled myself out of it and sat still.

    If you struggle with this, here are a few tips that will help:

    • Work on your awareness
      A few times during the day, stop what you’re doing, take a deep breath, and check in with yourself. This will help you recognize how you feel and when you’re trying to escape.
    • Feel into your body
      Emotions are connected to physical sensations, usually in the chest and stomach. If you have a hard time exploring your feelings, simply observe the bodily sensation until it dissolves.
    • Learn your patterns
      Most people have a specific pattern they engage in when faced with an overwhelming task. Mine is resistance, frustration, overwhelm, and then losing my train of thought because my brain gets foggy. Once you understand yours, you’ll have an easier time catching yourself.

    Remember, you don’t have to do anything – you just have to sit still until you don’t want to anymore.

    Wrap-Up To Help You Stop Procrastination Once And For All

    If you procrastinate, you don’t have a time management problem – you just struggle to regulate your emotions.

    Doing nothing to beat it might seem silly, but it’s exactly what will help.

    The fear, discomfort, and overwhelm are much tougher to deal with than to reach for a quick distraction. But if you want to stop procrastinating, there’s no way around them. You can only go through.

    Don’t allow yourself to do anything but the thing – or go through the emotions it causes.

    Paradoxically, doing nothing like that will make you a lot more productive.

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    Moreno Zugaro

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  • Lost in Symptom-land: How to Live Life When Doctors Don’t Know What’s Wrong with You

    Lost in Symptom-land: How to Live Life When Doctors Don’t Know What’s Wrong with You

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    The only thing worst than hearing a terrible diagnosis is “all your tests look normal.”

    Let me start this by saying that I’m an English teacher, not a doctor. Literally none of this is medical advice.

    Last fall I came home from school on a Friday, and I felt like I’d been hit by a train. My head was pounding to the point that I felt nauseous, and I was struck with terrible fatigue. I’m a teacher, so I’m used to getting sick a few times a year, but this felt different. I slept for an hour, then went to our school’s football game to take pictures for the yearbook. I slept most of the weekend.

    But the next week, I still felt sick. And the week after that. This felt like a cold, but I wasn’t congested. Oddly my cheeks hurt, and by 1pm everyday I had zero energy left. I know what it is: it’s a sinus infection. I’d had sinus surgery the year before, and my nose was really sensitive now. I went to my family doctor and said, Here’s what I’m feeling. You know I had this surgery last year. Could this be a sinus infection? He said, “Probably, let’s do some antibiotics.” First round, not enough. Second round, I started to feel better.

    But then I got another sinus infection in the winter. No fevers, no congestion or drainage. But that old head pounding, face hurting, total exhaustion experience. More antibiotics. Then in the spring I got a cold and afterwards…another sinus infection. This time, the antibiotics didn’t fix the headaches; the fatigue was worse, and I started feeling disoriented. Something wasn’t right. I wanted to play with my kids, flirt with my wife, and fix that drywall in my daughter’s bedroom. But I didn’t have the energy. I’d come home from work so tired that I wanted to cry, and honestly, sometimes I did.

    I asked my doc to test me for lyme. In the last year, I’d started photographing birds, which meant that I’d been spending hours hiding in meadows with tall grasses. I never saw a tick bite, but who knows. I spiked high for the lyme antibodies, but only reacted to four of the ten protein strands they test (you need five to be positive). The lab marked it negative in the patient portal, and my doctor and I never discussed it.

    I went to see my ENT who’d done my surgery. He did a CT of my sinuses: All clear. He said, “Everything looks good here. These sound like migraines. I’m going to set you up with a neurologist.” I wasn’t happy, and I let him know – clearly this was a problem with my sinuses, and he wasn’t listening. The fatigue was getting out of control, which increased my anxiety and decreased my sleep, which made me even more tired. The neurologist’s first opening was three months away at the end of summer.

    I met with the neurologist, and she said none of what I’d experienced actually sounded like sinus infections to her. She suspected migraines but cautioned me that chronic fatigue can come from a hundred different illnesses. She did bloodwork, an MRI of my brain to check for anything scary. All normal. I increased hydration, started taking B2 (it supposedly helps with migraines), and really focused on regimenting my sleep schedule.

    School started, and once again I couldn’t keep my energy up. I had a nagging feeling that the answer was in front of me. I started reading more about lyme disease: Apparently a lot of people never see a rash from a tick bite. Some of the major symptoms are chronic fatigue, a sense of disorientation, and migraine headaches. And the latest published studies say you don’t need five of the proteins to be positive.

    I went back to my family doc and laid everything out for him: Here are all the doctors I’ve seen. Here’s every test I’ve had done. Here are all of my lingering symptoms. Could this be lyme?! He looked at my initial lyme test results and said, “Yeah…it’s lyme. The lab marked it negative because you only reacted to four proteins, but as far as I’m concerned, this is a positive.”

    I’m nearly finished with my month-long round of antibiotics, and I’m hoping that it knocks out the lyme completely, but I may still have a long road of recovery ahead of me. Here are some things I learned throughout this last year of medical turmoil.

    Don’t Google Your Symptoms

    Here’s the problem: Whatever your symptoms are, there is some kind of cancer with those same symptoms. And when you have generic symptoms like mine (headache, fatigue, dizziness), the internet will tell you that you might be fine or you might die in the next two weeks.

    The older I get, the more I realize the degree to which my mental health affects my physical health. The more anxiety I have, the less I sleep. And the less I sleep, the harder it is for my body to heal itself. And looking up all of my symptoms on the internet so I can read about what I could have only increases my anxiety.

    So what should you do instead of looking things up? Go talk to your doctor. Here’s the thing: Your doctor went to medical school; you didn’t (if you did, then you already know this). Truth be told, next time I see my ENT, I owe the guy an apology. I thought he was slubbing me off onto the next doc; but he was using his expertise to the best of his ability. And lyme can cause migraines, so he was actually right.

    When you talk to your doctor, don’t just tell them your symptoms; tell them what all has been going on in your life. I decided that my issue was in my sinuses and handed that diagnosis to my doctor. Yes, I’d had sinus surgery, but in that last year I’d also moved into a new house and started spending significantly more time outdoors. Maybe if I’d said all of that, he would’ve connected the dots because he does this for a living: “Bird photography? Where are you doing that? Have you seen any tick bites? Let’s test you for lyme just to rule it out.”

    Be Persistent

    In the last year, I’ve seen my family doctor, my ENT, another ENT who specializes in dizziness, a neurologist, and a psychiatrist (because I was starting to think this was all in my head). Each of these doctors helped me rule out different illnesses. And each gave me new data via blood tests and imaging that I could use to narrow down my issue.

    This has been exhausting, endlessly frustrating, and the copays have added up to a small fortune. But I’ve known for a year that something wasn’t right in my body. Once I started reading more about lyme, my wife said, “I feel like you’re deciding you have lyme disease.” I said, “No, I’m not. I’m deciding that it’s still a possibility, and I want to have that conversation with my doctor so he can either confirm it or rule it out because it occurs to me that we never actually discussed the results.” And if my doctor had said no, it’s not lyme, then that’s one more sickness I could cross off the list.

    You’re not supposed to feel sick for a year. Don’t give up and decide this is just your life now.

    You Still Have To Take Care Of Yourself

    When I first saw the neurologist, she asked me how much water I drink in a day. Um…I have coffee in the morning, some water at lunch, and then some water with dinner. That good enough? No. One of the leading causes of headaches is dehydration, even if the headache is also being caused by an underlying illness. Now I drink at least 40 oz. of water every day, and I aim for 60.

    She also asked how often I exercise. Well…before I had kids, six days a week. Now? I exercise when I can, but I’ve been so tired for a year that it really hasn’t happened. We all know that exercise releases endorphins, which are your brain’s natural pain killer. Exercise helps you fight disease and keeps your heart strong. The neurologist told me that I don’t need to go crazy. Aim for three times a week for half an hour. She said, “Even just taking a walk around your neighborhood after dinner counts. Get up, move, your body needs it.”

    Your body can’t heal without consistent sleep and a healthy diet. Again…you know these things, and so do I. But life happens, and sometimes the Big Mac is easier (and it tastes so damn good). Some small changes I’ve made:

    • No more soda
    • Cut down on bread and pasta unless it’s rye (or fresh baked) bread or chickpea pasta 
    • Drink more water
    • Less dairy unless it’s organic
    • More fruits, vegetables, and nuts as snacks
    • Wake up at the same time each day and go to sleep at the same time each night

    These aren’t cures for anything, but they’re manageable steps towards better overall health, especially when you feel like you’re already fighting something.

    Take Care Of Your Mind Too

    I’ve seen my therapist more in the last six months than I have in several years before. The truth is, being sick is depressing. Chronic fatigue, chronic pain, chronic anything will wear on your mental health. And you don’t always realize it’s happening.

    At the beginning of the summer, Katie (who is actually a therapist) said, “You need to go talk to your therapist about all of this. It’s too much to process and carry every day, and she knows how your brain works.” And she was right. Katie has been amazing with encouraging me and reassuring me that my feeling sick isn’t a burden to her or our daughters, even when I feel like it is. My health matters more than my ability to perform to a certain standard as a dad and a husband. But I also need someone, who isn’t my wife, to remind me of what I can and can’t control in all of this.

    After my doctor confirmed lyme, I went and talked to my therapist and told her that I’ve been reading everything I can about lyme disease. Early caught lyme is easily treated and cured, but I’ve had this in my system for at least a year, which means there’s a higher risk of permanent damage. What if these antibiotics simply aren’t enough? What if I have lasting effects and can’t shake the fatigue?

    She reminded me that all of this reading really isn’t helping me. I said, “Well the more I know, the better prepared I can be for the possible worst. I’m using my intelligence.” She said, “No, you’re using your anxiety. Using your intelligence would be reminding yourself that the only thing you can control is what you do today to improve your health. You’re taking your meds; you’re sleeping well, eating well, and exercising. What’s going to happen tomorrow or next week is out of your control. And if you have permanent effects, you’ll deal with those each day too.”

    If you’ve been battling a mysterious malady, please know that there are answers out there. Listen to your body, talk to your doctor, and don’t give up.

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    Mike Henson

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