You’ve made it halfway through the challenge! Maybe you’re proactively planning your day around the suggested well-being task, or maybe you need to check your calendar each day for a reminder — there’s no right or wrong way to do this.
If you’re interested in bringing our research-based mental health training into our newsroom, check out our private training portfolio or reach out to me at sam.ragland@pressinstitute.org.
1. ⛔ Get unavailable: Create (and protect) at least a 2-hr block of no-meeting time
- Why? Two of the most worthwhile things you can do for your brain are to focus and to single-task. Allow yourself the time to start and finish something in one shot. Close a loop. Tie the loose end. Protect your critical thinking skills, creativity and empathy by managing others’ expectations of your response time when you’re unavailable.
2. 🧠 Get learning: Register for a professional development or continuing education session
- Why? While it may seem counterintuitive, one effective intervention for burnout is upskilling and reskilling. It takes you out of the stress cycle and drops you right in the center of your potential, reminding you that where you are is not where you will be indefinitely.
- Schedule an in-person or virtual coffee date with a mentor.
3. 🆓 Get free: Delegate something you enjoy off your plate
- Why? The art of delegating well is a two-for-one. For the delegated, it conveys trust and the opportunity to grow when done purposefully. For the delegator, it refills bandwidth and shifts your role from owner to supporter.
4. 🙌 Give praise: Give specific praise to a team member or colleague
- Why? Praise is so powerful, and so often too general. Whether you give it or get it, pursue specific detail, which gives you a more complete story of what’s being done well and directs you to doing more of that.
5.🚶 Get moving: Take a walking meeting
- Why? The benefits of moving the body are so widespread. When your mind gets stuck, when you need an idea but can’t find one, go for a walk.
Habit-building tip
The book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear uses a framework called the Four Laws of Behavior Change, which breaks down the process of building a habit into four steps: cue, craving, response and reward.
Now that we’ve established a cue and a craving, we need to structure our response to make it easy and seamless. Decrease the number of steps it takes to start doing the habit you’re trying to establish — you should be able to start the habit activity in less than two minutes (if not, break it up into steps). Consider investing in technology or tools to make that habit easier.
