{"id":8246,"date":"2021-10-08T09:29:54","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T09:29:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TheNextWeb=1369264"},"modified":"2021-10-08T09:29:54","modified_gmt":"2021-10-08T09:29:54","slug":"use-your-good-productive-days-to-make-your-bad-days-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/?p=8246","title":{"rendered":"Use your good productive days to make your bad days easier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I\u2019m writing from the in-between. I\u2019m not doing great, sure, but I\u2019m not doing bad. I\u2019m not staring at the wall blankly, for example, which is something I\u2019ve recently come to appreciate not doing. I\u2019m sitting here, typing these words \u2014 I\u2019m functioning. History suggests that, in a couple of days, I\u2019ll be in a pretty good place.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s been the cycle since March 2020. The past couple of years have been hard on all of us, in different ways. I have a lot of work to do on myself, and I intend to get help and do that work. We all should.<\/p>\n

But I wager more than a few people reading this article are traveling along their own personal good\/in-between\/bad spectrum. And because we\u2019re living through a real-world disaster, and not a movie disaster, we all need to keep doing our jobs in the meantime.<\/p>\n

Since we\u2019re all going to be wildly fluctuating on the good\/in-between\/bad spectrum for the foreseeable future, we might as well plan around it.<\/p>\n

Use your good days to plan for the bad ones<\/h2>\n

When I have an unproductive day, I feel bad about myself. When I have a productive day, I convince myself that every day will be like that from now on. Neither of those reactions is particularly helpful. So I try not to operate that way anymore.<\/p>\n

One good day isn\u2019t a sign that the bad days are over \u2014 but one good day is an opportunity. So now I try to use the good days to set myself up to function better on the bad ones. What does that look like?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to depend on your job, of course, but here are a few rough categories I\u2019d like to suggest:<\/p>\n

1. Planning<\/h2>\n

Nothing is worse, on a bad day, than having to decide what to do \u2014 decision fatigue is real<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Planning the week to come on good days gives me a better chance of getting something done on the bad ones, because it means I don\u2019t have to make a decision when I\u2019m not feeling up to it.<\/p>\n

2. Outlining and brainstorming<\/h2>\n

Actual writing, for me, is like operating on autopilot. Thinking of ideas, though? That\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re similar, consider using your good days to brainstorm or outline your projects, so you can focus on the execution on the bad days.<\/p>\n

3. Writing snippets<\/h2>\n

I bet a good percentage of the emails and messages you write every day are more-or-less identical. If you set up a snippet manager and spend some time writing snippets ahead of time, you can respond to routine messages with less thought.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a small thing, but being able to easily respond to a few routine messages on a bad day can really help build momentum for other tasks. Snippets make that easier.<\/p>\n

4. Automating things<\/h2>\n

Automation is a habit<\/a>, and a good day is a great time to work on it. Spend your good days building bots, so they can work for you on the bad days. Here are few automation ideas<\/a> to get you started, and my colleague Krystina even wrote about using automation to fight burnout<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You get the idea: spend your good days setting stuff up, so that things are easier on the bad days. This takes a certain amount of self-awareness: you need to remember, on the good days, that the bad days are probably coming back, then commit to doing the work that will help you get through them.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t going to pull you out of your good\/in-between\/bad cycle, but using the good days to plan for the bad makes it all a lot easier to keep the momentum going. It\u2019s helping me a lot, and I hope it helps you.<\/p>\n

This article by Justin Pot was originally published on the Zapier blog<\/a> and is republished here with permission. You can read the original article here<\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing from the in-between. I\u2019m not doing great, sure, but I\u2019m not doing bad. I\u2019m not staring at the wall blankly, for example, which is something I\u2019ve recently come to appreciate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.londonchiropracter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}