Mental illness + work productivity

Advice for someone (given via Twitter DM) who asked how I manage to balance mental illness with productivity at work:

Hey, nice to meet you!

I can strongly relate to all this. And hey I'm 29 too! :) Especially the feeling of days being wasted from all the energy spent on mental health. I'm still working on coming to peace with the fact that my mental health is not just going to change overnight and I've got to try to do my best to live the best I can now and be at peace with how things are now, while trying to strive for better.

In terms of productivity, I find a few things have helped me:

- Not focusing on hours worked, instead focusing on tasks. If I'm feeling well, I can actually get a decent amount of stuff done in a short time, but I usually am not feeling well 8 hours a day and beating myself up over not doing that just hurts my mental health. People I know who still have to show up to an office and look busy 8+ hours a day won't admit this to their boss, but they also do the same thing. They just accept that they won't be productive the whole day and make the most out of what they can do, looking busy but letting their brain rest and not beating themselves up the other hours. Honestly even healthy people do that.

- Only setting one goal a day, or maximum 3 goals. When I was really depressed, some days that goal had to be "take out the trash" or "check the mail," and I had to balance carefully which days the goal would be work-related and accept that a lot wouldn't get done. If work *had* to get done, it meant accepting the fact that home tasks wouldn't and planning for that. As I got healthier I got to assume I'd take out the trash even if it wasn't the day's goal, but I still stick to that idea. The idea is that you can stop and be proud of yourself after you've done your one goal. If you're feeling good that day, you'll likely want to do more. If it's an off day, you can still be proud of yourself. It also helps you manage your work expectations, you get a more realistic picture of when you can actually finish things.

- Going to therapy. Weekly seems to work well for me, for a while I did 3 days/week of more intensive therapy. It *really* helped me be able to do more and figure out a plan.

I know everyone's situation is different and what works for me might not work at all for you, but maybe that helps a little bit.