Just a little crazy

Alex Reichert
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

For the past six months or so, I’ve attempted to track my mental health on a near-daily basis. The findings might shock you!

Just kidding. This experiment has largely just quantified and confirmed a few ideas that many people already know.

(TL;DR — strenuous exercise, creative activity, meditation, and a healthy social life quantifiably improved my mental health.)

Just for some background, what I did was the following. I created a list of activities I consider “positive habits,” such as exercise, reading, socializing, and meditation. Along with that, I set up three different “assessments,” meant to measure different aspects of my psychological health: depression, anxiety, and well-being. Then I took all that data and analyzed if certain activities had a bigger impact on my happiness than others.

Unsurprisingly, exercise — particular strenuous exercise, such as busting my ass at the gym or playing a sport — had a significant positive effect on my mental health. It didn’t take a whole lot of data to make me believe that; most of the time, I could feel the effect of a good workout almost immediately afterward. You just have to sweat.

Creative activities varied in their effectiveness at the day-to-day level. The main activities I tracked for myself were coding (i.e. working on a personal project), writing (i.e. journaling or blogging), and playing the cello. Though often the source of immense frustration, each of these effectively reduced depression and anxiety, and increased overall well-being in the long run by providing a sense of accomplishment and giving my existence some minor meaning.

Meditation I found surprisingly difficult to incorporate into my daily routine, even for just 5 to 10 minutes. It’s one of those things that often feels like a waste of time, even though every time I did it, it seemed to improve my overall happiness at the end of the day.

It was interesting to take a look at how my social life affects my mental health. I found that my well-being is largely a function of how healthy I perceive my relationships to be. To me, good relationships mean openness, laughter, meaningful conversation, and safety. By safety, I mean the belief that you can be yourself, that you can be honest, and that you will not be disrespected or ignored. There’s also safety in developing a routine — for example, “every Thursday night, we all go out for dinner” — to reduce the stress of constantly planning things on a whim.

Now for a few honorable mentions:

  • Drinking plenty of water had a surprisingly high impact on reducing anxiety and improving my overall happiness. I’m not entirely sure why that is… I’ll have to look into it. But I’m going to keep on doing it.
  • As much as I suffer while doing yoga, I begrudgingly admit that it’s a great way to reduce depression. And I certainly always feel quite proud of myself after completing a physically and emotionally draining 90 minute class.
  • One last activity that I hesitate to include since I only did it a handful of times is dancing. In my case, I took a “90’s beginner hip-hop” dance class with some friends. I was terrible at it, but so was almost everybody else. And it was amazing.

Overall, I think the act of simply being more self-aware about my mental health made a big difference. It made me realize that although I’m not a particularly depressed person, I often struggle with stress and anxiety. I learned that anxiety can manifest itself in physical symptoms, and that a few cases of lightheadedness and abdominal pain don’t necessarily mean I have cancer or some terminal neurological condition. I learned that I need to be less pessimistic; that joy and contentment are products of a more positive mindset. And I learned that finding meaning in my work is hugely important to my happiness.

Knowing these things is the easy part. Improving is work.

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