6 Activities For When You Feel Uncertain, Unfocused, and Anxious

One of the things revealed during periods when the world is thrust into great uncertainty by unprecedented events is: each living person - from the expert to the novice - is in the process of figuring out this experience we collectively call life. A revelation that can remain concealed to most of us over long swaths of time by the cloak of normality.

This knowledge may seem trite and somewhat obvious, but it’s not. 

Most of us are familiar with the anxiety inducing feeling, everyone - but us - has figured out the way to navigate through the oceanic current of life. 

With an eye at the remarkable it’s worth keeping in mind that disruptive times - like the one we now find ourselves - have double power to keep us away from living remarkably, by edging us towards activities capable of generating little to no value. In times of uncertainty, it becomes instinctive to worry and complain and gloom while losing touch with activities that better our chances at staying true to the things we value.

What realising everyone is in the process of figuring things out does, is make easier to trust less the possibility that a solution to the problems we encounter in our  own lives will come from others. This realisation nudges us towards figuring out and implementing solutions to the problems we come across in our lives. 

As highlighted in my previous post, activities we engage can be thought of as existing on a spectrum of value - low value activities to high value activities, based on value generated. Our goal in efforts to live remarkably begins at exercising intention to paddle towards the high value activities that inch us closer to remarkable. 

In this post, I will be throwing light on 6 specific activities with supreme effectiveness at easing the process of figuring out the way to navigate through life. 

1. Journal.

If a boat will keep you afloat against the ocean's currents and a paddle with help you stir towards much desired land, a piece of paper will keep you buoyed up against life's currents and a pen or pencil will help draw you towards much desired value. 

Get into the habit of pouring onto a blank page the contents of your mind. The benefits of this activity are significant (and I have written about them here). But if there is one benefit relevant to the subject of figuring things out it’s the one highlighted by Paul Graham who writes, "writing down ideas helps to form them."

2. Track Your Time.

The solution to dispelling the anxiety induced by the sense of not knowing what you are doing is to have a record of what you are doing. 

It might be tempting to rely on memory but this reliance is a mighty ask. You would be surprised at how effective looking at a written description of activities you've done over the course of a particular time can be at dissipating the angst that arises from lack of knowledge of the way your limited time is being spent. 

Also, tracking your time is the only way to provide a response to the question how much time am I devoting to value-generating activities thereby giving you the sometimes necessary feedback required as you navigate on (or off) course.

3. Develop and Maintain a Rooted Productivity Program.

According to Cal Newport, a rooted productivity program is a single document that describes the key productivity rules, habits, and systems that you currently follow in your life to stay functional and productive.  

The effectiveness of the program rests in its demand that you make the unbreakable commitment to, (a) follow the processes in the document and; (b) on a regular basis evaluate these processes to better reflect what's working and what's not, as well as what's important to you and what is not.

You probably have a description of rules, habits and systems to stay productive - but only in your head. The benefit to maintaining a concise written version of the description is it addresses the tendency to be loose about already established commitments to approaches you once embraced, by protecting against unmediated shifting through rules, habits and systems as you adopt new ones with promise of improvement.

Develop one, maintain it, and keep it updated.

4. Organise the Inputs Coming Into Your Life.

One way to distill peace of mind is by maintaining the sense you know where what is. In the words of David Allen, author of the book Getting Things Done, "being organised means nothing more or less than where something is matches what it means to you."

Set up a system of "buckets" to receive categories of inputs coming into your life, and update the system by removing or adding buckets to match the current situation of your life.

5. Keep Your (Immediate) Environment Distinct by Categories of Activities.

The nature of your environment will make or break you. For the most part, there are lot of things about your environment that you can do close to nothing about. But for the parts that you can do something about, start by designing them into spaces that ease getting into categories of desired activities. 

One set of categories recommended by Colins Grey, creator of CGP Grey, comprises four categories. Where you will: Sleep, Create, Recreate, and Exercise. The secret to making the spaces work for you is to keep them separate and distinct. 

6. Read.

Reading, broadly speaking, can be understood as the collection of activities aimed at interpreting the observable world. It is an activity inherent to the process of navigating through life. For you with an eye at the remarkable, making the most of this ability is non-optional. 

Put yourself within situations you are interested in having in your mind. Depending on the activities you enjoy, this could be exposing yourself to a book, listening to a podcast, watching a documentary, going to a conference, speaking to a field expert etc. 

It might be impossible to eradicate (our sense of) uncertainty, but we can arrest and manage its anxiety-inducing grip over our lives. Devoting time and attention to activities capable of dispelling its paralysing effects gives us a fighting chance.