Mike Michalowicz describes his struggle with functional depression and a method that helped him move through it: shrinking tasks into tiny time blocks, like focusing on the next hour or even just getting one foot out of bed. He emphasizes therapy matters, but breaking inertia into manageable pieces generated momentum to rebuild his routine.
When you're struggling with depression, one of the best ways, from my experience, is having structure, going into routine. But one of the hardest things to do is to get into routine. So what I found is there's a technique I use. I reduce the time blocks that I'm considering. When I'm feeling fine and great, I'll say, "Today I need to do XYZ." That's a time block of today. When I'm feeling stress or anxiety or depression, and I did go through a period of what's called functional depression, I did seek therapy, everyone. Just seek therapy. I got therapy and support. When I was going through that period, it was about a 2-year period, a realization I came out of that was I would start the day by saying, "I got to get this done today," and I couldn't even get out of bed. I started compressing down those time blocks. And so instead of saying, "What do I have to do today?" I'd say, "Well, what do I need to do this next hour? I need to get out of bed, brush my teeth. I just got to get my teeth brushed." And sometimes even that was too big. Sometimes I was struggling so much mentally, they said, "Just get one foot out of the bed." So in the next 5 seconds, can I get one foot, not myself out of bed, just one foot off the edge? And when I got the blocks small enough, I was able to get some momentum going. And that became transformative for me. I don't know if that's a good tool according to the docs, but it was a good tool for me.
