Rest is important. Doing nothing during your time off may be a sign that you're in need of more rest than you're typically giving yourself. But that's not necessarily the case. It's important to understand the difference between feeling guilty for doing nothing while you're off vs being distracted from your unhappiness while you're at work. If it's actually the latter, make sure you're getting sunlight, fresh air, healthy food, vitamins, and enough sleep. Once those needs are met, it's time to move on to feeding your mind, body, and soul the things that it wants. Puzzles, exercise, and art. Puzzles could mean playing Portal or building something with Lego or rearranging your kitchen to be more efficient for you to use. Exercise could mean going to the gym or riding a bike or hiking or dancing. Art could be drawing or playing a musical instrument or fucking around with some play-doh or visiting a museum or making a video and editing it even if you don't plan on showing it to anybody; feel something or make something you can feel a sense of accomplishment for having created.
I personally like to get chores and errands done early on a day off and then I feel momentum from that to actively enjoy the rest of my day. My go-to art these days is cooking for my wife and I, sometimes throwing together cocktails to enjoy while we chat and I prep and cook. Life is precious and finite, and doomscrolling is endless. Put the phone down every once in a while and challenge yourself to be comfortable with being bored, and then reach for something new to end that boredom. It's hard to start but like anything else it gets easier and you get better at it with time and practice.
Idk if it still is a thing, but like 8 years ago I used an app that I think was called Sleep For Android. This was before smart watches were a thing, so this was a tool to help monitor my sleep, especially for my weird and irregular work/sleep schedules. There were two awesome features that it had which I highly recommend you find a way to make use of:
Bedtime alert. Based on your waking alarm time and trending sleep quality stats, it would tell me when to start winding down for bed and give me a target time to be tucked in with eyes closed, ready to sleep.
Variable waking alarm. Based on its estimation of where you are in your sleep schedule, your alarm may shift up to like 20 minutes before your target alarm time to pull you from a lighter sleep state so you feel less groggy.
I'm hoping this app or something like it is available to you so you can get back on track!
I'm pretty sure that's it! I still have it installed on my phone. Give it a shot and see if it's helped after like two weeks. I depended on it while I traveled for power plant outages and worked 7 12s per week.
Rest is important. Doing nothing during your time off may be a sign that you're in need of more rest than you're typically giving yourself. But that's not necessarily the case. It's important to understand the difference between feeling guilty for doing nothing while you're off vs being distracted from your unhappiness while you're at work. If it's actually the latter, make sure you're getting sunlight, fresh air, healthy food, vitamins, and enough sleep. Once those needs are met, it's time to move on to feeding your mind, body, and soul the things that it wants. Puzzles, exercise, and art. Puzzles could mean playing Portal or building something with Lego or rearranging your kitchen to be more efficient for you to use. Exercise could mean going to the gym or riding a bike or hiking or dancing. Art could be drawing or playing a musical instrument or fucking around with some play-doh or visiting a museum or making a video and editing it even if you don't plan on showing it to anybody; feel something or make something you can feel a sense of accomplishment for having created.
I personally like to get chores and errands done early on a day off and then I feel momentum from that to actively enjoy the rest of my day. My go-to art these days is cooking for my wife and I, sometimes throwing together cocktails to enjoy while we chat and I prep and cook. Life is precious and finite, and doomscrolling is endless. Put the phone down every once in a while and challenge yourself to be comfortable with being bored, and then reach for something new to end that boredom. It's hard to start but like anything else it gets easier and you get better at it with time and practice.
That's the problem, gotta wake up better.
Idk if it still is a thing, but like 8 years ago I used an app that I think was called Sleep For Android. This was before smart watches were a thing, so this was a tool to help monitor my sleep, especially for my weird and irregular work/sleep schedules. There were two awesome features that it had which I highly recommend you find a way to make use of:
I'm hoping this app or something like it is available to you so you can get back on track!
Yeah I remember that app! I tried looking for it just now but I cannot for the life of me recognize it. I went through the list of every app I've installed and found this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.sleep. I hope its right.
I'm pretty sure that's it! I still have it installed on my phone. Give it a shot and see if it's helped after like two weeks. I depended on it while I traveled for power plant outages and worked 7 12s per week.