As an unabashed Agile enthusiast, I think about a lot of things in terms of Agile methodologies. I can’t give you a fix for your mental health. Can I give you a new perspective that could help you? Let’s see. Check out these five mental health tips from Agile methodologies.
1. Mental health is a project
Staying mentally healthy can be a struggle. It can feel overwhelming. It can feel so huge that you can’t make progress on it. The enormity of it can daunt us. But one thing we can do is try to reframe how we think about it. I am depressed, so I have a project: manage depression. There are many aspects to managing depression: eating healthy, exercising, positive behaviors, going outside, and more. Sometimes we let things slip when life gets hard. Other times we may have to focus more on a single area of management because it is the most important at the time. The thought, “I am depressed,” is a difficult one. I prefer, “I have to manage my depression.”
The ”I am” statement feels worse to me like it is a flaw of mine. The “I have to” feels better because rather than being a thing that I am it is a thing that I do. It may be a small thing, but that small measure of control helps me to feel a little better about it. It separates out the depression from being who I am to being something I need to work on. I’m not a weed in a garden, there are weeds in my garden that I need to manage. Reframing it in this way helps me, and I hope it can help you too.
2. Big problems can be broken into small problems
One of those areas where I struggle is getting myself to do simple things like chores. Depression makes me feel like those tasks are so daunting and terrible that I can’t even bring myself to start. Looking at my entire kitchen and thinking, “I have to clean my kitchen,” makes me shudder. So I’ve learned to change that. My kitchen cleaning is a big problem; if I set a goal of “clean the countertops,” that’s a much smaller goal. It doesn’t clean my whole kitchen, but it does give me a smaller thing that I can do more easily.
Depression is a big problem. The smaller management steps of my depression project are easier to deal with. Eating healthy helps me keep my depression under better control, so that is a smaller problem. Learning some quick and easy recipes is a smaller problem. Having the right ingredients on hand is another small problem. By taking the large project of depression and breaking it down into smaller more achievable tasks, I’ve made progress possible. What does this have to do with Agile? Breaking big things into small things is Agile, my friend!
3. Working on too much can undermine your progress
You have smaller things you need to work on. But if you try to eat healthier, shop, work out, learn new recipes, and more all at once, you are likely to not be able to get any of those done. You are working on too much at once. Your “Work In Progress” or WIP is too high. Getting things done in the agile world is about figuring out what you can achieve and getting the pace fast. Any time things seem to stall, the first place to look is to see how much work is in progress. If you can stop trying to do something with lower priority and focus on what you really need right now, you’re more likely to succeed.
Learning how to cook healthier is a large task, there are a lot of things that can go into it. If you aren’t making progress on learning how to cook healthier generally, then narrow your focus. Learn how to cook a single healthy meal. But what if that is not going well? If we assume you are learning how to cook a healthy meal of chicken, broccoli, and rice, then focus on getting one piece right. Learn the method of cooking rice that works for you, then move to broccoli or chicken. Every large problem you break into smaller problems can break down farther. Get it down to something you can do, do that, and then pick up the next thing.
4. You need to celebrate your successes
One of the important aspects of Agile is seeing what you’ve done and celebrating that. It can be hard to keep trying to manage depression and feel like it’s going nowhere. But let’s say you’ve learned how to cook that healthy meal. Tell yourself you did a good job! You put the work in to improve, don’t just move on. Take a minute to acknowledge your hard work. Yes, it may feel silly, but do it anyway. “Good job me, that meal was great.” That’s all there is to it.
I have a Kanban board I use for chores, and it keeps all my completed tasks. If I’m feeling like I haven’t accomplished anything at all, I can look at my “Done” column and see what I’ve done. Some days it’s not as full as I’d like and others it’s loaded. But I can look at it and see what I’ve done. That moment of celebration when I move my task out of “Doing” is important to me. I did something. That is worthy of a celebration, even a quick congratulation to myself. Your successes, no matter how small, are worthy of success.
5. Retrospect to improve
One important thing about any new process or method to keep managing mental health is checking in with yourself to see if it is working. It’s very easy for things to become a mindless habit, something you don’t put a lot of effort into. Rather than being a great, productive tool, they become little more than a check box. So take a look at what you are doing and see if it is working. Be honest! I was trying a thing for a while I was stretching in bed after waking up to try to motivate myself to get out of bed. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure it’s not working. But instead of failing every day, I know that it’s not working, and I can try something else.
The importance of taking an honest look at what you are doing and deciding if you want to continue cannot be overstated. Sometimes things work for a while, but then situations change, and they are less effective. If you don’t take a look sometimes to see what is working and what isn’t, you might keep doing something ineffective. When you decide something isn’t working, you can try to make it work in a new way! You can abandon what wasn’t working for something new. Taking the time to look at how things have been going lets you consider how to proceed and course correct if needed.
Agile as a mental health tool
These five mental health tips are some of my favorites, ones I try to use for myself. Agile as a mental health tool was something I hadn’t really considered until recently. When I started thinking about it, I realized the potential for how useful it could be. One thing that is not necessarily a tip but potentially useful is, be Agile! Things change, situations change, people change. If you move quickly from what isn’t working to something that might, you have greater chances of success. Doing what someone else says is best is less important than doing what works for you.