Morning Coffee & WiFi: Anti-Burnout Fresh Brewed-Daily

For many of you, this isn't an unusual picture. You go into a fast food joint with your laptop, order a coffee, and drink said coffee while you might sit there for hours using the free wireless access that the restaurant provides. What it is you're doing, I'm not entirely sure, but there's just... something about it that keeps you from being able to do it at your house, whether it's writing that new article or you just can't seem to get your weekend plans straight. Let's take a look into why, shall we?

Part of the reason has to do with your environment changing. Going to the same place for the same tasks over and over can (and usually does) become repetitive, eventually leading to burnout... as unlikely as it may seem. Establishments like the one in the picture above can help us break free of a cycle we're in because, well, most minds think by analogy. When the only thoughts you have are repeating ones, you can quickly become stuck and unable to truly be productive at what you do. Taking a change of scenery every now-and-then isn't too far different from taking a vacation from a mental standpoint (to me, at least), and that's often enough to get over hurdles in general. For example, I've been trying to write a novel on the same laptop at the same spot in my bedroom for quite a few months now, but sometimes, I'll feel myself not really writing anything. Often times, the solution to this problem is the simplest one: Go somewhere else, and it doesn't have to be far; just shake things up a bit. Sometimes, even going to the kitchen table with my laptop and making a drink can jump off enough good ideas to get me through the day. The general rule of thumb I go by can, ironically, be explained in the way that some young people will understand (something that is quite a rare occurrence for me): When all of the good ideas in a room are used up, I go to another room until that first place has some good ideas again.

Stupid-sounding, I know, but bear with me here.

What happens, essentially, is you begin to fall into a mental rut that, while not noticeable when you're writing Chapter 2 and explaining (with subtlety) that a character is incapable of cooking without involving the fire department, by Chapter 22, your thought process could likely have derailed entirely. Multiple times. And that isn't a pretty feeling. While in transit, you may decide to scrap the idea of a nightmare exposing trauma in an explosive manner for some of the cast sitting down at the table over drinks and talking about their experiences that led them to where they are today. I'm unsure if it's the change of scenery that brings this on or if it's the fact that you're allowing yourself a break before you become completely burnt out and just decide to drop the idea altogether, no matter what potential it could hold. To put it in short, no idea you have will be likely to grow into the original outcome you wanted at or before starting because, well, things change. People will go in and out of your life, just like they'll go in and out of the McDonald's you're sitting in. Nothing can be held onto forever, but what you do grasp onto is enough to make a potentially wonderful idea flourish.

The above might even happen to you in some ways. You get in your car to go somewhere and turn on some music to keep the feeling of being by yourself at bay. You might start listening to Neil Diamond, but by the time you arrive, you're listening to Guns 'n Roses... two very different types of music. If you've ever caught yourself feeling stuck or in something repetitive, the general solution is to break the cycle, but sometimes as people, we don't know how to do this, or we don't realize we need to in the first place. Granted, I don't think that anything is immune from this cycle because we as people need change on occasion. As long as we're focusing on  a single part of ourselves, we may think we're bettering it, but in the long run, we're just wearing ourselves down because we're giving too much attention to one aspect and not enough to the others that may be in desperate need.

So, with that being said, I leave my readers to go out and try something different if they feel they're in a rut of some kind. Take a vacation or see a movie and give yourself the mental break from routine that you've been so desperately craving all this time. You'll find that it can do wonders for you, both in the short- and long-term.