Make Your Workday Work for Your Mental Health

When you’re struggling with your mental health, getting through your workday can feel a lot harder than usual. It’s not always the quantity or type of work that is making your anxiety, depression, or other mental health difficulties worse — sometimes it’s that your workday is structured in a way that’s at odds with your natural rhythms or your mental health challenges. You can take steps to structure your workday, using your self-knowledge, doing some experiments, and balancing your needs with your job responsibilities. By building strong habits around when you do focused, deep work; creating routines to make progress on tasks with vague or long-term deadlines; and building in times to let your mind wander to take advantage of unfocused recovery time you’ll boost your mental health — and your productivity.