When you’re worked up over some dilemma, talking about it with someone else can give you a whoosh of perspective, mostly because the other person’s mind isn’t stuck in a black cloud like yours is.

The overwhelmed mind tends to regard everything as bad. The optimistic and resourceful part, whatever that is, has gone offline.

Richard Carlson described this effect well in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff:

“Someone who is in a good mood in the morning might love his wife, his job, and his car. He is probably optimistic about his future and grateful for his past. But by late afternoon, he claims he hates his job, thinks of his wife as a nuisance, thinks his car is a junker, and believes his career is going nowhere. If you ask him about his childhood while he’s in a low mood, he’ll probably tell you it was difficult. He will probably blame his parents for his current plight.”

The low mood works like a bad hallucinogen that turns your personal world into its dark, anemic twin, a landscape drained of good possibilities.

Aside from being unpleasant, this kind of mood creates an immediate practical problem, in that it prevents you from identifying and taking the actions that might bring you out of it. The mind doesn’t know what to do in this state, because a world drained of positive possibilities isn’t one in which anything seems like a good idea. If your world currently seems like a place where things never work out, how are you going to work it out?

This is the point where it’s often helpful to present your dilemma to a different brain, one currently unafflicted by the low-mood drug. This other mind – one belonging to a friend, a therapist, or a certain kind of bartender – can lead you back to a more sober view of your “impossible” dilemma.

Any advice they give will probably be familiar and straightforward, maybe annoyingly so. Sleep on it. Go for a walk. Remember all the other times you had an impossible problem that worked out fine. Pick some other constructive thing to do for the time being.

This simple advice will usually be effective, because the real problem is the impenetrable pessimism imparted by your mood, not so much your dilemma’s unsolvable nature.

Even if they don’t offer advice, just hearing someone contemplate your dilemma aloud without being overly perturbed by it can be reassuring in itself. What’s most noticeable is that they clearly don’t see your situation as the insurmountable life-ender that it feels like to you. More likely they’ll see it as just another ephemeral bummer-of-the-week, of the type that characterizes human life (which is probably what it is). Girl troubles? Money worries? A lapse of self-confidence? You don’t say!

The unafflicted mind is wiser and more pliable. It can consider a range of possibilities. It’s able to zoom out to take the long view in a way the mood-bound mind cannot. It can see that life is long and the sky has fallen many times already.

The Ripcord Sheet

Access to a sober, unafflicted mind isn’t always available though, especially when you’re at work and facing deadlines. You don’t always want to bring your problem to another person anyway, for a variety of reasons.

For these occasions, I’ve installed in my office a simple device I call a “ripcord sheet.” It’s a piece of paper containing simple, neatly-typed instructions to myself, written at a time when I was not consumed by frustration and pessimism.

I attached a hot pink page tab that says “Ripcord,” which sticks out of the bookshelf behind me.

When I’m spinning my wheels, unable to move the day forward, all I have to do is grasp the tab and pull the ripcord, and suddenly I’m holding in my hands a procedure for moving forward.

The instructions you write on your ripcord sheet will depend on the mental states you most often get stuck in. For me it’s usually a crash in motivation or a loss of optimism.

Whatever the specifics, the sheet should have nothing on it but clear, step by step instructions in this basic form:

• In case of X:
  • Do A, then B, then C
• In case of Y:
  • Do D, then E

…where X and Y (and maybe a Z) are the afflicted mental states that tend to grind your day to a halt, such as overwhelm, doubt, or dread.

A through E are sober, sensible actions that historically have proven helpful: work on something else for a while, journal about it for a few minutes, or break the task into extremely small next steps.

The afflicted states on my own ripcord sheet are “Doubting my abilities,” “Motivation crash,” and “Off-task state,” which is a term I use for a state of hyper-distraction, in which I’m just reacting and doing busywork and no longer working intentionally.

For this off-task state, as one example, my instructions are:

1. Break away from any “attention sinks” – close browser tabs, put phone away, etc.
2. Choose any item from to-do list
3. Do one block of work on that item

This is just enough instruction to get the day moving forward again. I may still be in a huff when I read the sheet, but I know these instructions come from a sober mind, and I know they offer a way out of frustration, which is what I desperately want.

The ripcord sheet works because pulling the ripcord is a physical action. It doesn’t require thinking or reflection, or any other faculties compromised by low mood. I don’t think I’ve ever pulled it and had it not help me.

Your own sheet’s instructions are best written some time after you’ve come out of a low mood, when you’ve got access to your practical wisdom again but still remember what it’s like to be flailing. Keep the advice short. Two or three steps that will get you out of total paralysis. A short message in a bottle from a wiser state of mind.

When you pull the cord, you don’t need to remember what’s on the ripcord sheet or how it might help. In fact, it’s good if you’ve forgotten. All you need to know is that you’re in a freefall. Just grab the handle and pull.

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