Seth Gillihan

How are things for you in your work life, whether you work outside the home or your primary job is taking care of your children? Naturally, depression and anxiety affect our relationship with our work, so try to consider your job when you’re feeling well. Do you love your work? Find it meaningful? Do you enjoy your coworkers? Are you overextended, constantly feeling like you don’t have enough time to do everything well? Do you struggle with the demands of work and home? Or are you bored at work? Do you feel like you have abilities that aren’t being put to use? Or maybe worst of all, are you bored and overtaxed?

You’ll also record how much you enjoyed each activity and how important it was to you. Remember, the enjoyment and importance ratings are yours alone to make—nobody else gets to decide what you enjoy and find important.

Finally, you’ll rate your overall mood for each day on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is very bad and 10 is very good.

Plan to fill out the form the same day you do the activities, either at the end of the day or throughout the day. If you wait until the next day or later, you’ll forget important information.

In fact, their circumstances sound a lot like what we would create for someone if we wanted to make her depressed: high stress, low reward, and minimal engagement. When the little energy we have is spent doing things that are unrewarding, we continue to deplete ourselves mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Why is that the case?

First, it tends to be the most straightforward place to begin. Doing more of the things we enjoy is not complicated. That’s not to say it’s easy, but it’s relatively simple, and the simplest approach is generally the best place to start.

Second, research has shown there’s a big “bang for your buck” effect from getting more active. In other words, a little investment in behavior change can go a long way. Doing the right kinds of activities tends to have an antidepressant effect.

Finally, changing our behavior can “jump start” changes in our thinking. For example, we might believe, like Kat, that “nobody really wants to spend time with me.” A quick way to test that belief is to ask our friends if they want to get together. When they (most likely) say “yes,” we have evidence that people actually do like us enough to spend time with us.

In fact, studies by the late Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and her collaborators found that if we spend too much time trying to “get to the bottom” of why we’re depressed, we can actually feel worse as our minds begin to ruminate unproductively. The fastest way to feeling better and staying better is doing the things that keep us feeling well.

The developers of behavioral activation determined that the activities you plan have to come from your values, as described in a treatment manual by Carl Lejuez and his fellow authors. In this context, “values” doesn’t have a moral or ethical overtone, although your values can include morality and ethics. Here, your values are anything that you enjoy, love, or get satisfaction from doing.

find ourselves stuck in a Catch-22: We won’t feel better until we do more things, and we won’t do more things until we feel better.

How do we engineer activities that will stop the short-term reward we get from withdrawing, and increase our long-term reward by doing things we really care about?