Anyone who’s had the misfortune of seeing me in a full-blown depressed state (actually surprisingly few people, considering) knows how Jekyll and Hyde I can be. The level-headed – hell, even happy – Jenni is logical, smiley, and just generally mild-tempered and behaves vaguely logically.

When I’m depressed or anxious, all that goes out of the window. It’s all black and white thinking, general ‘I don’t want to do anything because it’s all a waste of time’, etc. I’m basically two different people, and as difficult as that is for anyone else to understand process, at least they can walk away from it. I can’t.

So one of my coping mechanisms is to have a messaging system from Normal(ish) Jenni to Psycho Jenni in the hope that it will make things a little easier.

One of the forms this messaging system takes is this:

It’s a very simple idea.¹ But it works. Each note has a fun, interesting, distracting or relaxing activity on it. When I’m feeling down and unable to think or get myself out of a mood on my own, I pick one. The only rule is that once I pick one, I have to do it. I can’t pick another until the first one is complete.

This means that they’re pretty general things that aren’t too time, money, people or location-dependent. Because they’re intended for a depressed phase, they’re also things that don’t require too much effort or thinking. Whilst thinking (especially practical problem-solving or web tasks) is great for when I’m in a lighter depression, it’s almost impossible when I’m at rock bottom.

All the options have some light degree of productivity to them, which satisfies the part of my brain that wants to do something and achieve something whilst the rest of brain is saying ‘No. Stop everything.’

Best of all, this is really flexible and can be applied to practically everything, from date nights to kids’ activities to holiday destinations to books to read. So if you’re reading this and you don’t suffer with anxiety or depression, it’s still a good way to make life more interesting or make those niggly decisions.