The behavior I wanted to change was what I’d describe as ‘mental shut-downs’. To elaborate, I felt that I often tend to just fall into an autopilot-like mode where I don’t think about anything just continuing whatever task I’m currently doing, as if my brain has “shut down”. It often leads me to lose track of time for a significant period as well as an avoidant behavior regarding things I don’t want to think about, such as obligations or negative thoughts. While helpful in some ways, shutting down frequently prevents me from important self-reflection or tackling real issues. I measured myself from Saturday through Monday for three total days. I logged in 1-hour intervals as well as additionally logged whenever I noticed the behavior occurring recently.
There were many factors that affected each other and could sometimes lead to mental shutdowns in themselves. I found that the strongest of these would be things like stress, tiredness, large homework quantities, or tense interactions, which all could cause me to feel overwhelmed and fall back on mental shutdowns to cope. Negative thoughts were also a dangerous factor because they could occur spontaneously or pile on top of my current stressors, as well as loop back into itself by giving way to more negative thoughts. Another avenue that lead me to mental shutdowns were distractions, where it was less about running away from stress and more about being too engrossed in activities such that I was no longer critically thinking about my actions and therefore the work I needed to do. There were also a few positive factors that helped me get back on track such as encouragement. I also found I tended to want to shut down more at late night.
Some other ways these factors interacted with each other include how tiredness would exacerbate the effect of other smaller-load factors. I found that if unexpected kinks or slows interrupted my current flow of work or what I had planned to do, I would quickly lose momentum and presence of mind. Hanging out with friends while working also only worked when I had only a small number of straightforward assignments to do. If too many, the overload of having to interact socially while also concentrate on a more complicated assignment, or the load of knowing I had lots of assignments left to do while socializing, would frequently cause mental shutdowns. Finally, it’s notable that the smaller factors in themselves did add up, so if enough were at play, a mental shutdown could trigger. For example, poor internet connection while trying to work on homework while experiencing physical pain late at night when I could be just scrolling on my phone instead, would be a sure-fire way to lose myself.
Overall, I found that logging had some benefits but didn’t really stop my behavior in this case. At the end of the day, I had logs to then see in hindsight how my day went and when shutdowns would occur, providing me a useful self-reflection rather than being unsure of where all my perceived lost time went. Things I would do differently however would be the logging intervals. Hourly logs, while decreased from the 15-minute logs, still felt burdensome to me and added another small mental load factor. I usually wasn’t doing anything too different or interesting on an hour-to-hour basis, so there wasn’t much benefit in exchange. Next time, I would like to try logging in larger blocks of time, which also may give me more reason to spend more time on the individual log, reflecting on how I’ve used the last few hours in totality. I also think that if I want to change my behavior, I need specific strategies to engage in when mental shutdowns occur, such as calming exercises or more proactively calling for encouragement, which was the best alleviating factor I had found.
