How to get started (even when you don’t feel like it) [How to be an Original]
Sometimes you just don’t feel like doing stuff. You sit on the couch and your body doesn’t seem to respond to your thoughts. No matter how hard you try to think yourself into action, you just sit there. Watching television, wasting time, idling along. How do you snap out of it?
If you don’t recognize this state of mind (or body), you’re lucky! I talked to quite a few people and this seems to happen to the most of us once in a while, and a lot to some. There are a lot of reasons why this might happen to you. In this article I’m making a list of helpful tips that have helped me overcome this phenomenon. The tips are both short term (immediate) hacks and habits that prevent it from happening.
Drink a glass of water (or two)
Mild dehydration takes away your energy to a great extent. To quote the Wikipedia page on Dehydration:
Symptoms of mild dehydration include thirst, decreased urine volume, abnormally dark urine, unexplained tiredness, lack of tears when crying, headache, dry mouth, and dizziness when standing due to orthostatic hypotension.
Recognize some of these? The solution is simple, drink a glass of water or maybe two. Wait for 10 more minutes while you’re body rehydrates, refreshing you and releasing energy to go do stuff.
Since a couple of weeks I adopted the habit of drinking a big glass of water first thing in the morning. And about two hours later, when I have my first coffee I drink another glass. It really works.
Take a short nap
Another cause of inertia may be that you’re just tired, or even edging on sleep deprivation. The cure for this is simple, take a short nap. You can try a meditation nap, a power nap or use the salesman trick.
The latter you can use when you don’t have the time to take a long nap, but do have a spare moment. Just sit in a chair and take a your keys in one hand, now let the hand with the keys dangle over the side of the chair and doze off. When you get to deeper stages of sleep, your muscles will relax and you will drop the keys. That in turn will wake you up again. A simple yet effective way of taking a short nap. But it’s best to avoid the need for napping altogether.
Exercise in the morning
Doing a workout in the morning is very satisfying and helpful to maintain energized throughout the day. Even having done the exercise makes you feel good about yourself the rest of the day, but your body is also powered up and ready to go (that is, if you don’t overexert yourself).
Be sure to replenish your body after the workout, drink water, eat some fruit (if the exercise was cardiovascular) or eat some protein (if it was about building muscle mass).
(I really should do this more often…I’m no star on this habit)
Tell others
Make a public commitment of the things that you’re going to do (like your goals). This makes sure that you have an external and internal motivation to get going.
Avoid sugar rushes
When you’re feeling low on energy it’s tempting to take a dose of sugar, often in the form of a candy bar, or a high energy ’sports’ drink. It helps, but the effect is only temporary and aggravates matters mostly. Since they are ‘fast’ sugars it will result in a sugar rush. It will release a lot of energy in your body, and it will induce a spike in insulin to transport that sugar throughout your body. But as fast as the supply of sugar appeared, it disappears. This short spike leaves a surplus of insulin that needs to be fed with sugar.
Avoid this by eating foods with the right carbs: the ones with a low Glycemic Index. One of the ideal snacks in my opinion is a banana.
Just take the first step
Sometimes getting started is as simple as taking the first step. Stuck behind the television, just decide to turn it off (and do it!). It’s a small step, but it breaks the cycle in which you’re stuck. Stuck playing games on internet? Just hit that little red cross in the upper red corner, or the red dot in the upper left corner (if you’re on a Mac). Nobody cares about that high score anyway.
Have some tips of your own?
These are just six tips that I use regularly, but there are plenty other possibilities. What do you do to break out of idle mode? Please share in the comments.
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How to get started (even when you don’t feel like it)
Original post here: Lodewijkvdb
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