WiserHours
Menu

Follow your curiosity

Get unstuck · Lesson 9 of 10

Get Out of Your Head: Use Action to Break a Loop

Use one small, timed, active or absorbing task to get out of a thought loop, and rate your mood before and after to see what helps.

FREE LESSON
Cover picture for lesson 9: Get Out of Your Head: Use Action to Break a LoopVideo coming soon
The video is not out yet. The written lesson below has the same content.
THE WRITTEN LESSONFollow along at your pace

When you are stuck in a loop, thinking harder rarely helps. In this lesson you learn a simple way out of your head: doing something. The evidence behind these ideas is mostly about mood and energy, not about overthinking itself, so treat this as a practical experiment, not a cure.

Action first, mood second

When you are stuck in a loop, it is tempting to wait until you feel like doing something. But motivation often follows action, not the other way round. A talking therapy called behavioral activation builds on this: do small things first, and let mood follow. That therapy was built for depression, so using the idea on an ordinary hard day is an extension of it.

Two rows. The top row, Feel like it, then act, has a red dashed arrow, a red cross and a sad face. The bottom row, Act first, mood follows, has a green dashed arrow, a green tick and a smiling face. An orange label reads Behavioral activation.(opens the full-size picture)
Waiting for the mood puts the steps in the wrong order.

Why pulling back backfires

When you feel low, pulling back brings quick relief. But it also cuts you off from the activities that could lift you.

A person sitting on a sofa inside a room, with a closed door beside it. Beyond the door, faded footsteps, two people and a frying pan fade into the background. A label reads Quick relief, then cut off.(opens the full-size picture)
Staying in feels like relief, but it closes the door on helpful things.

Make it small and timed

So pick one small, doable task, and give it a time: walk to the shop at eleven. Do it whatever your mood. Then rate your mood out of ten, before and after. The numbers in the picture are only an illustration. Your own scores will tell you what helps you.

A card reading One small task: Walk to the shop at 11:00, with 11:00 circled and a clock beside it. Below, a scale from 0 to 10 titled Mood, out of ten has a Before marker at 4 and an After marker at 6.(opens the full-size picture)
A small task, a set time, and a mood score before and after.

Movement is one good choice

Movement is one good choice. In one small experiment with 18 physically active young women who usually slept too little, ten minutes of walking up and down stairs lifted energy more than a small dose of caffeine (50 mg), though the lift was temporary. It was a small study, so do not read it as a promise. Pick movement that suits you, and if you have ME/CFS or long COVID, where exercise can make fatigue worse, check with your doctor first.

On the left, a person climbing stairs beside a full battery, labeled 10 minutes of stairs. On the right, a cup of coffee beside a half-full battery, labeled The lift is temporary.(opens the full-size picture)
Ten minutes of stairs lifted energy, but only for a while.

Or choose something absorbing

Another choice is something that fills your attention, like cooking a recipe you have never tried, or a hard puzzle. It leaves less room for the loop. People call complete absorption in an activity a flow stateflow state: Complete absorption in a challenging task, with action and awareness merging, less self-consciousness and time seeming to pass differently. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named it; it tends to appear when a task stretches your skills and gives clear feedback.Full entry in the glossary, though you cannot switch that on at will. Scrolling for more news is not that kind of action: it keeps you scanning long after it stops telling you anything useful.

A frying pan, a recipe card with the steps 1 Chop, 2 Stir and 3 Taste, and a puzzle piece, labeled Fills your attention. On the right, a phone with an endless feed marked with a red cross, labeled Endless scrolling isn't it.(opens the full-size picture)
Cooking and puzzles fill your attention. An endless feed does not.

YOUR TURN

Read more

Read the full lesson script

In this lesson, you'll learn a simple way out of your head: doing something.

When you're stuck in a loop, it's tempting to wait until you feel like doing something. But motivation often follows action, not the other way round. A talking therapy called behavioral activation builds on this: do small things first, and let mood follow.

When you feel low, pulling back brings quick relief. But it also cuts you off from the activities that could lift you.

So pick one small, doable task, and give it a time: walk to the shop at eleven. Do it whatever your mood. Then rate your mood out of ten, before and after.

Movement is one good choice. In one small experiment, ten minutes of walking up and down stairs lifted energy more than a small dose of caffeine, though the lift was temporary.

Another choice is something that fills your attention, like cooking a recipe you've never tried, or a hard puzzle. It leaves less room for the loop. Scrolling for more news isn't that kind of action: it keeps you scanning long after it stops telling you anything useful.

So remember: act first and mood follows, keep it small and timed, and choose something absorbing. Before the next lesson, the next time you're stuck in a loop, do one ten-minute active or absorbing thing, and rate your mood before and after. Next, you'll learn when it's more than overthinking.