Happy New Year! I had a restful and refreshing few days and now I’m stoked to get back to routine. I definitely love being able to enjoy the holidays with friends and family, doing festive activities and enjoying all the food and drink. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t crave my regular schedule! So, to get me get back on the right trajectory and help set me up for 2026 (aka making my big dreams happen) – I’m starting a new series on my blog called “Embodying my BEST SELF” a quick no fuss guide to help me (or anyone actually) get back to good habits, productivity and taking action towards on my goals. So let’s get into it!
Chasing your dreams, embodying the energy of your future self or just down right being productive can cause the best of us to get into a slump.
The first steps in getting out of a slump is realizing that you are in a slump. But a close second is realizing that the slump is usually based on your emotions/feelings based on your surroundings.
Your surroundings can be inclusive of your actual physical surroundings (think your house, your office space) but also your mental surroundings (like the type of people you are around, the content your are consuming or even how you are spending your time).
In any case, I like to think of a slump as the “valley” of our journey to our best self. And learning how to bounce back is just an opportunity to practice resiliency! Here are my top ways to bounce back from a slump.
- Journal: I have been and will aways be a champion of journaling. Kidlin’s Law states: If you can write down a problem clearly, you’ve already solved half of it. So writing your thoughts, emotions and feelings down when you feel like you are in a slump, can help you further identify the slump inducing activities or factors. (The preference here being actually using a pen and paper as a oppose to typing it on a computer or your phone). Some ways that I love to journal: Brain dump (which is really just writing EVERY THOUGHT in your head on paper), create a list of things I want to do/a list of things I want to accomplish, things you are thankful for in spite of being in a slump, write all the ideas you have or even a dear diary on the last couple of days/weeks/months.
- Fix your environment: As mentioned above – the environment you are in can really have an effect on our feelings. So tidying up, organizing and clearing space is the first way to boost your mood and will also give you a sense of control. (Which is important when you feel like everything is spiralling). For me a deep clean up and organizing of my desk helps to make me to feel less out of sorts. But if you are short on time, may be consider setting a timer and picking up your room or a particular room in your house. And where possible, I would even extend this to tiding your digital spaces. For me that looks like cleaning up my following list on socials, archiving boards on Pinterest or organizing and deleting pictures on my phone.
- Sort your task list: Hopefully, with #1, you have a list of things you want to do (but if not thats in place… you should definitely start there). The important part is to prioritize that list: It’s either “must do now, should do soon, schedule for later” or my personal favourite “things I can do” vs “things I can’t”. Then take the highest priority items (such as: what must be done now or things I can do) and decide what can be done in a short time frame, preferably a 5-15 min time block. Then get it done! The whole point is to take action on the list in a meaningful way. To illustrate this with an example, say you want to practice writing more, a 5 min time blocked activity to take action on this is write a list of milestones you want to work towards (e.g. create content online, start blogging or do restaurant reviews).
- Create an updated routine: You must have heard the saying “a goal without a plan is just a wish” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery! I mean I love wishing, but I also love the dopamine effect of getting stuff done! It could be small wins or big calendar switches in your routine. So continuing with the goal of “writing more content online”. That’s a great start, but adding a little more thought behind it can really move it from a wish to an actionable plan. Something I’ve started doing is being ruthless with my calendar. I am getting to the point where if something isn’t in my calendar – it’s not getting done!! (Well within reason, I’m not a robot). But here is an easy to follow example on how to use this process:
So think of 3-5 activities that you can schedule into your calendar this week or month that can help you achieve it. So with the goal of writing content online you could plan in your calendar: open a substack or medium account, create a back list of content ideas for the month, publish an article once a week. Then you would add time blocks in your calendar to help you stay on track.
- Monday could include a 45 min time block to open an account and set up your profile.
- Tuesday you could spend 1 hour writing
- Wednesday you could block some time to finish writing and then edit
- Thursday you could create imagery (or use some Pinterest) to add visuals to your written content
- Friday you could publish!
- Saturday you could create a backlog of 3-4 more posts
- Sunday you could plan your week again
And there you have it! 4 actionable steps to help you get out of a slump! Hoping this resonates! Do you have any tried and true ways to get out of a slump! I would love to hear it :)
