How to Get Out of a Rut
Let’s define a rut. A rut is when someone feels stuck, unmotivated, or unable to progress, often reacting to the same routine without feeling productive or fulfilled. From my personal experience, this is something that happens to me usually, I start strong and productive but find myself slowly falling back into a less organized and disoriented mindset. It causes me to not want to get up in the morning, go work out, cook, or clean, and I feel miserable. It’s an ongoing challenge with me and I’m learning how to identify ruts to get out of them quicker I hope I can help you out if you’re experiencing these as well.
I start by identifying when I’m in a rut. Self-awareness is the key step to really making a difference in your actions. It can look different for anybody but describing what my ruts look like may help you as well. I can relate it to depression, where I don’t think highly of myself, creatively I’m suffering, and I don’t have the energy or motivation to do things I should be doing. I binge TV, eat out more often, and lose track of my expenses, in short, it isn’t pretty.
What I’ve also been learning to do is accepting that its okay to take a step back and decompress. Decompression is productive. I allow myself to rest and give myself a break. There might be a day or days where I don’t feel like meeting my goals and that’s ok. I aim to complete 1 thing that day whether it was go to work, or clean my apartment, something acheivable and meaningful.
I used to hate resting. I was so hard on myself for taking a break and allowing myself to enjoy video games or TV. It’s something that I struggle with now from time to time but I’m working on it. There has to be balance. I think I speak for many young adults today when I say it would be nice to be a kid again so I wouldn’t have to worry about bills or working a job haha. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case so being realistic with myself and holding myself accountable is nonnegotiable. I’m proud of myself and the work that I do but pushing yourself to unachievable distances is something that isn’t fundamentally possible.
So once I get up and realize it's time to get my life together again, I do a brain dump. I typically use notability or a pen and paper to jot down anything and everything I need to get done. This can stretch from my home life, to my work life, to my health, or finances. If notability is not an option for me, or I don’t feel like writing down what I have to do, I also use ChatGBT’s text-to-speech feature and I get to vent about all I need to do while making a to-do list. This serves a dual purpose for me and if you haven’t done that I would recommend it. I also utilize ChatGBT to categorize my separate tasks into buckets depending on what part of my life it affects, I then work to prioritize each task based on criticality and importance.
I like to be realistic with the goals I set and try not to be over-ambitious (key word try). I don’t want to set myself up for failure and I wouldn’t want you to do the same. Be realistic with the goals you set forth, bring intention, and if you’re unsure how long the task will take then dedicate 30 minutes - 1 hour a day until it's complete. I would bring myself down if I did not meet deadlines on the tasks that I assigned myself and It has been hard to dig myself out of that habit. On the flip side, it's ok to show discipline to meet your goals on time. It’s really about finding balance on what works with you to enable your success.
Practicing patience is something I have also been doing, I tend to overwork myself and speed run through all my tasks. I used to put so much emphasis on getting things done whether it was at home or work but I realized “It’s not that serious”. Now I just take my time and practice patience, it helps me regulate my emotions and not be on the extreme side of the emotional scale. Identifying when I need to slow down and take my time has been so important to me but I feel like I’m just late to the game with this one and should’ve realized sooner.
Another thing I would emphasize is a framework. Understanding what your objective is, how you’re gonna get it done, and how long it’ll take is something that is so fundamental to achieving your goals. You feel more confident, you understand why you're chasing those objectives, and feel like you’re not just spinning in a circle.
Lastly, this is something that I am on a personal journey for and perhaps others are on as well, but metrics and achieving your goals have nothing to do with your self-worth. Being in a rut is difficult to get out of but through dedication and understanding you can persevere and get out of it. I put a lot of emphasis on my goals and think somehow they correlate to my self-worth but it's not true. Do your best and you’ll be alright.