At Mind on the Job, November is #RECOVEMBER, the time to talk about ways to improve wellbeing and reduce risk of burnout by improving our day-to-day recovery.

Researchers such as Professor Sabine Sonnentag have conducted and inspired a lot of scientific study of the factors influencing our day-to-day recovery from the demands imposed by work and life.

Check out this review paper if you’re interested!

Much of this research looks at psychological detachment from work, our ability to stop thinking about work so that we can properly enjoy our leisure time. The research recognises how our ability to detach from work psychologically can be impeded by many aspects of work, including the intensity of such work demands as time pressure and emotional labour.

Our top priority should always be to address these workplace psychosocial hazards directly, but there’s still value to be gained from identifying things we can do to get the most benefit from our time off work.

#RECOVEMBER is a month-long celebration of healthy recovery strategies. Below is the 2025 schedule:

How Do I Complete These Challenges?

Click on any activity listed below for a detailed description:

1. Reflect on your personal boundaries

One of the benefits of setting goals is that it helps you make decisions — pick the option that takes you closer to what you want. Boundaries are the other side of the same coin. If you understand yourself, if you’ve seen a pattern of situations that regularly make you feel stressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed, then you might be able to reduce these experiences by setting boundaries.

Boundaries are rules you apply to yourself, standards you use to ensure your needs are met, and decisions you make about how you’d prefer to live your life. Boundaries aren’t for controlling others.

For example, telling co-workers to stop contacting you after hours isn’t a boundary. A boundary is deciding that you’re not going to check work emails after 6pm. This is a boundary that, if you can sustain it long-term, can facilitate better recovery and wellbeing.

2. Reach out to reconnect with or thank someone

Meaningful connections are good for wellbeing. Connecting with friends and family can help you feel supported, especially if you’re struggling.

And if you’re already burned out, deliberate efforts to reconnect can be even more important! Burnout makes us inclined to withdraw as well as prone to emotional outbursts, so people who burn out can quickly become isolated.

Do you feel like you need a reason to reach out? Ask yourself who you’d like to thank. Few people are appreciated for all they do, so this can be a great place to start!

This approach also encourages you to reflect on feelings of gratitude, an act that has own benefits in terms of personal wellbeing and recovery. We’ll get to those soon…

3. Plan rest breaks into your day (and take them!)

Resting is not a sign of weakness!

Research shows that microbreaks (rests of 10 minutes or less) help you to maintain energy levels throughout the day. They can also help you to maintain focus and concentration — and in some cases they can help you to review your goals and make sure you are focused on the right things!

But many of us (including me!) have a tendency to push ourselves for hours at a time without a break. This may seem like Peak Productivity, but few of us can sustain it. Prolonged concentration can lead to earlier onset of fatigue, more difficulty concentrating, and higher risk of errors — including realisations that the task we’ve been so focused upon isn’t well aligned with our priorities.

If this sounds familiar, then try scheduling short breaks into your day — and take them! Often you’ll start the break feeling like you still have plenty of fuel in your tank, but you might be surprised how much more seems to be there after a 5-10 minute rest.

4. Spend 30+ min working on art, craft, or a hobby

For many of us, resting during our downtime involves passive entertainment activities such as scrolling through social media or watching TV. There’s nothing wrong with doing this occasionally, and it’s usually better than pushing ourselves to keep working. But it tends not to yield the best recovery outcomes.

But research on recovery shows that a better alternative is “mastery” activities. These are skill-based activities with the potential to provide feelings of pride and accomplishment (e.g., practicing a musical instrument, attempting a new recipe, learning a language, or working on a hobby). Spending off-job time on mastery activities is associated with better psychological outcomes that last into the next day.

Many people who have heavy workloads find that they don’t get much time to exercise creative pursuits. Arts, crafts, and other creative activities are mastery activities that can meet our needs for creative self-expression. If they’re activities we’re interested in, then spending time on them reinforces our self-worth and helps us meet our need for autonomy.

So today I challenge you to find at least 30 minutes to spend on mastery activities, such as arts, crafts, or a hobby.

5. Make a list of 3 things you are grateful for

What’s so great about gratitude?

Paying attention to positive things in life can be a very powerful mental practice, and a daily gratitude diary is one of the easiest ways to do this. Attending to the good things in your life helps to keep you from ruminating and worrying about the negatives. It can remind you of things that went well, small acts of kindness, and the easily-overlooked people and things we rely on.

Reflecting on your gratitude to others can strengthen personal and professional relationships. Reflecting on grateful feelings about things that you handled well can boost your confidence and self-worth. Reflecting on gratitude can encourage an optimistic outlook on life.

Of course, most of this assumes that you’re not just doing this once, you’re taking time to reflect on positive things every day. But all habits begin with doing something once!

6: Record the next steps for incomplete tasks

Do you ever get so involved in your work that you feel frustrated at the end of your shift because of incomplete tasks? If so, I have a great hack for you: just a little post-work planning can help you psychologically detach.

Research shows that we tend to remember incomplete tasks better than complete ones. It’s like we reserve space in our working memory for incomplete things to ensure we resolve them. And a consequence seems to be that if important tasks are incomplete at the end of a work period, we’re more likely to find ourselves thinking about them.

Fortunately, there’s a nifty solution. If your tasks are incomplete and your workday is over, take a couple of minutes to make a quick plan. On a notepad, write down each important task or goal that you didn’t complete (if the tasks seem unimportant, you’re not likely to ruminate about them after work, so leave them out of this activity). Then, for each important task, write down (a) where you’re going to complete it, (b) when you’re going to complete it, and (c) how you’re going to complete it (the main steps).

Your plan might look like this:
FINISH STAGE 3 OF MY MEETING PREPARATION
Where: On the Metro
When: Between 7:30 and 8am
How: Find answers to all of the questions I wrote on page 2.

That’s it! Just getting that plan out of your head and onto paper can reassure your brain that you’ll follow through and it doesn’t need to keep remining you to get this important thing done. Give it a try today!

Smit, B. W. (2016). Successfully leaving work at work: The self‐regulatory underpinnings of psychological detachment. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(3), 493-514.

7. List 5-10 stressful work demands

Work demands are any aspects of work that require your effort or attention. Stressful work demands might involve tasks you perform (especially if they are difficult or unpleasant), procedures you follow (especially if they feel cumbersome or unnecessary), people you interact with (especially if they are rude or selfish), and even features of your work environment (especially if they are uncomfortable or distracting).

Just a few days ago I wanted you to focus on the positive, so why would I encourage you to focus on “stressors” (things that cause you stress)? Well, I certainly wouldn’t want you making a list like this every day! Nevertheless, #Recovember would not be complete without an honest look at your stressors. Here’s why:

Firstly, identifying your stressors is a starting point for taking action to resolve them. If we aren’t willing to look closely at our own stressors, why would we expect anyone else to do so?

Secondly, after making that list, we could do things with it. One of the easiest next steps is to group the stressors into categories, which can help us think about them differently. For example:

  • Which stressors do you think are specific to you, and which ones are causing stress for everyone in your team?
  • Which stressors are about the work itself, which stressors are more about your organisation’s systems and procedures, and which ones are more about people?
  • Which stressors could you probably do something about if you really decided to fix them, and which ones are entirely outside of your control? [we’ll come back to this one on November 15]

Having made a list, we can also consider people we could talk to about it. Sharing details of our stressors can make us feel less isolated, it can lead to collective problem-solving, and it can prompt the development of better relationships. We’ll discuss this further on November 10.

Sometimes, reflecting on things that are bothering us can be useful for its own sake. It can be a form of journaling, which can help us to offload our worries or frustrations (similar to the approach covered on Day 6) as well as to process our feelings instead of pushing them down. Regular journaling can allow us to see patterns in our emotional responses (e.g., the sorts of things that regularly upset or frustrate us) and behavioural responses (e.g., the sorts of situation that makes us avoid problems instead of trying to fix them), which can lead to better self-awareness and self-regulation. 

For today, it’s ok to just make that list.

Guo, L. (2023). The delayed, durable effect of expressive writing on depression, anxiety and stress: A meta‐analytic review of studies with long‐term follow‐ups. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(1), 272-297.

Searle, B. J. (2008). Does Personal Initiative Training Work as a Stress Management Intervention? Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 13(3), 259-270.

8. Get some exercise

This is nice and simple. Exercise appears to help us deal with stress. It makes our bodies and minds a little more resilient, and also improves our short-term responses to work stressors. So go get some exercise today!

(Except of course that nothing is that simple — many people have medical conditions that limit their capacity for exercise or mean that exercise carries a high risk of medical complications. And for everyone else, it’s worth remembering that no amount of exercise will shake off the effects of a truly toxic work environment.)

9. Share a personal boundary

Last Saturday we reflected on our personal boundaries. A personal boundary is a rule you apply to yourself, standards you use to ensure your needs are met, and decisions you make about how you’d prefer to live your life. I gave the example of deciding that you’re not going to check work emails after 6pm, a boundary with potential to facilitate better day-to-day recovery and wellbeing.

Some boundaries are just for ourselves. If you find that listening to radio news updates while driving makes your commute a lot more stressful, then unless you carpool, the decision to switch off news while driving is nobody else’s business.

Other boundaries intersect with our personal or work relationships. In such cases, communicating our boundaries to others may help avoid misunderstandings. Consider the example of deciding that you’re not going to check work emails after 6pm. If there’s no requirement that we check work emails after 6pm, there’s nothing wrong with having this boundary. But if we let our co-workers know that we have this boundary, they’re less likely to be surprised or annoyed when we don’t respond to an urgent message. To be clear, in this example we’re still not telling them to never contact us after hours, we’re just making them aware of the boundaries we apply to ourselves.

But this isn’t the only reason for sharing boundaries. Having had lots of stress management work in organisations, I can tell you that most people seem to enjoy sharing and listening to personal stress management strategies. Since many people never even consider setting boundaries, other people might really benefit if you share a boundary that you find helpful. And by listening to others, you might identify a new boundary you’d like to set.

10. Tell someone about 3 things you find stressful

On Day 7 we discussed making a list of stressful work demands. Today, we’ll share some items from that list with other people.

One of the challenges with identifying psychosocial work hazards is that many people feel compelled to keep silent about them. Perhaps they worry they will be punished for complaining. Perhaps they voiced concerns when changes were implemented, and now they assume (since the changes went ahead anyway) that no-one cares about the problems. Perhaps they assume there’s no alternative.

Sometimes, these concerns are valid. But not always!

And even when there is some truth to these concerns, it’s often still worthwhile to share them with others. Talking about stressful work demands is draining if it happens every day, but a monthly conversation with co-workers about aspects of work that are obstructing you from your goals or making you stressed can be very healthy. It can be validating when other people say they feel the same way. It can be productive to collaborate on trying to identify solutions. And sometimes, peer support can help you to recognise a problem is serious and needs to be reported. Your peers might even be willing to help with the process!

11. Take 5 min to rest and reset after difficult tasks

This shouldn’t need a lot of explaining. The more difficult a task is for us (even — or perhaps I should say especially — if the difficulty is just pushing ourselves to start it), the more it drains us of energy. We need that energy to regulate ourselves — to perform other tasks, to keep track of what else we’re doing, and even to manage our mood and wellbeing. So when we finish a difficult task, it’s quite reasonable to take a proper rest and allow ourselves to recover some of that spent energy.

12. Take 30+ min to learn about a topic of interest

This is another activity in the Mastery theme (see #Recovember Day 4). Mastery activities (those with the potential to provide feelings of pride and accomplishment) promote better next-day recovery than passive activities like scrolling social media or watching TV.

Learning is an important part of mastery. Time spent learning about a topic of interest can build our confidence and provide a sense of achievement.

But choose your focus thoughtfully. It can be valuable, for example, to spend time learning more about something that will be useful for work. But if you’re not interested in that topic, pushing yourself to learn may be hard work, and 30 minutes may feel like 90. It will drain your energy instead of helping you to recover.

By contrast, if you reserve time in your calendar to learn more about something of genuine personal interest, it shouldn’t feel like work. It should be interesting, perhaps even fun, and the time should fly by.

What’s more, choosing to spend time on the things that interest you is healthy in other ways. Yes, learning helps satisfy your need for competence. But it also helps you meet your need for autonomy, because you didn’t feel compelled to learn about this particular topic. And by making time to pursue your individual interests, you’re demonstrating that those interests are important, which reinforces a healthy sense of self-worth.

13. List 3 people who have shown you kindness

November 13 is World Kindness Day, so I have two challenges for you today.

Your #Recovember challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to write down, post on social media about, or merely take a few minutes to think about three people who have shown you kindness. It could be small acts of kindness people showed you recently, or major kindnesses people showed you longer ago. Thinking about kindness shown by others is a form of positive reflection, and a more specific form of gratitude practice (see #recovember Day 5), which means it’s good for psychological health and interpersonal relationships.

Your World Kindness Day challenge is to show kindness to other people. It could be a small act that makes one person’s life just a little easier. It could be a thoughtful act that costs you little but means a lot to the recipient. It could be an act that promotes broader goodwill and understanding.

For more ideas, or to read some inspiring stories of kindness, go to https://kindness.org/

14. Record next steps for incomplete goals

On Day 6 I explained why we keep thinking about incomplete tasks when we’re trying to rest. Well, the same is true of goals we’re working towards. This means that even if we’ve finished specific tasks, we might still struggle to detach our thoughts from work if those tasks were steps towards an important goal.

Again, the problem can be addressed by taking time to make a list of what you have left to do, along with where, when, and how you will do them. It’s such a valuable technique!

15. Identify stressful work demands that could be changed

We’re halfway through #Recovember!

Back on Day 7 I wrote about the value of taking a realistic look at the work demands you were finding most stressful. Today, take your list of stressful work demands and sort each one into one or more of three categories:

CATEGORY 1: THINGS YOU CAN CHANGE

This category is for stressful demands that, if you were willing to invest the time and effort, you can probably make less stressful. A demand belongs in this group if there’s a chance you can do something like:

  • reduce your involvement (or just walk away);
  • renegotiate your responsibilities;
  • train someone to share the load or take your place;
  • schedule time to teach yourself a faster/easier/less demanding alternative method;
  • try something that might or might not help;
  • pay for someone to do all or part of it for you;
  • reduce the expectations on yourself for how you handle this demand; or
  • swallow your pride and ask for help.

CATEGORY 2: THINGS OTHERS CAN CHANGE

This category is for stressful demands over which you have no control, but which others might be able to change. A demand belongs in this group if both of the following apply:

  • Someone with whom you have direct contact (e.g., your boss, co-worker, or life partner) has power to influence this demand, AND
  • A well-prepared conversation with this person might encourage them to take action.

I would include in this category any stressful demands that affect others as well as you and where collective action might encourage change.

CATEGORY 3: THINGS THAT WILL NOT CHANGE

This category is for stressful demands that won’t change, regardless of what you and the people around you can do. It’s ok to have things in this category, but it’s important to acknowledge how different these are from the demands in the other two categories.

That’s all I’m asking of you today! We’ll talk more about the next steps on Day 23.

16. Try a different kind of exercise

On Day 8 I explained that exercise helps our bodies to get rid of stress hormones and be a little more resilient to stress. Today I’m encouraging you not only to get some exercise, but to try a different kind.

Studies have shown some stress-reducing benefits of intense exercise, and if you’re healthy enough that this is an option, it’s certainly worth trying. But not everyone is healthy enough for intense exercise to be low risk. Even so, be aware that there are stress-management benefits not just to moderate-intensity exercise like long walks, but also to resistance training (lifting weights).

And even if everything but walking seems beyond you, consider walking somewhere different! You’d be surprised how refreshing a walk can be when you do it in a less familiar place. Spending time in natural settings (such as bushland or near bodies of water) can be very relaxing, so if there is a place like that not far away, try getting your exercise there!

17. Assess your use of personal boundaries

On Day 1 I discussed personal boundaries, and on Day 9 we discussed the merits of sharing them with others. Today we’ll look at how well we apply them.

Personal boundaries are decisions you make about how you want to live your life, standards you use to ensure your needs are met, and rules you apply to yourself (rather than to others). This last point is critical, because while there’s work involved in deciding what our personal boundaries should be, the hardest part (for many of us) is making ourselves apply them.

For example, the boundary, “I will not check work emails after 6pm,” helps us to disconnect from work and make the most of our downtime. But we only benefit from this rule if we can make ourselves follow it. For example, if you have a particularly busy Tuesday that you feel is made easier by checking work emails after 8pm on Monday, you’re likely to break your own rule. And if you break the rule on Monday, you may not feel it’s a big deal to break it again on Wednesday.

Remember that the purpose of the boundary is to provide you with a clear rule to follow (for your own benefit). So if you’re struggling to follow such a rule, you need to change your behaviour or change your boundaries.

>Does checking your email on Monday nights really help enough to warrant intruding on your personal time? If it is more about seeking reassurance that nothing will going wrong, checking email may actually be hindering your anxiety management — you may benefit more from other techniques. Explore those while trying to follow your boundaries.

>But if a Monday evening email check really does help, change your boundary to one you can follow consistently, e.g., “I will not check work emails after 6pm, except on Mondays, when I will check once between 8pm and 8:30.”

18. Contact someone to ask for help (or offer help)

On Day 10 I mentioned that it can help your daily recovery if you sometimes talk to others about things that are causing you stress. Today we’re going to take a step beyond that.

We’re going to ask for help. WAIT NO DON’T STOP READING YET!

If you find it hard to ask for help, know that you’re not alone (some other time I’ll discuss the many reasons why people find this hard). But do you know how to get better at something you find hard? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with the letter P.

It’s practice. Practicing improves skill and reduces anxiety. So instead of wrestling with anxiety and doubt when you find yourself in desperate need of help, practice by asking for help at a less critical time. Try it today! Think of something you could use a little help with today and ask someone. Even if they say no, you’ll have practiced asking. And if they agree to help, that’s something to feel grateful about (see Day 5).

Don’t need any help? Then offer to help someone! Never push in and offer your advice without asking — just make a polite, obligation-free offer to assist someone. Helping others improves relationships, but helping is also good for the helper’s wellbeing (which is another reason you don’t need to be so hesitant about asking for help).

19. Practice slow, deep breathing for 5 min (3x)

It may sound like fantasy, but it’s possible to learn some level of control over your body’s stress response. The simplest method for doing this involves something that’s as free and easy as breathing. It’s breathing!

Our stress response is valuable, especially in a crisis. But most situations aren’t crises (if they are, that sounds like something your employer should fix). And it’s unhealthy if that stress response persists for long periods of time. Deep breathing can help you dampen that stress response.

Deep breathing involves slowly filling your lungs enough to activate your diaphragm (a sheet of muscle at the base of your ribcage) — if you place a hand on your belly, you should be able to feel it shift as you inhale. Hold the breath in (say for a count of 4) and then release it slowly (say for a count of 4). Develop a rhythm of slow deep breathing you can sustain — without engaging in any other activity — for 5 minutes at a time.

Obviously this isn’t something that’s easy to do in the middle of a hectic work shift. But making yourself practice deep breathing three times a day for around 5 minutes can make a difference to your recovery processes.

20. Take 30+ min to improve your personal strengths

I’ve discussed the benefits of spending time on Mastery activities (Day 4), and the specific benefits of learning (Day 12). But are there also recovery benefits of learning that involve self-improvement?

When we’re stressed, it’s easy to obsess over our own limitations. We could spend our downtime trying to fix these, but let’s face it: this is hard work! (This is why it’s worthwhile to seek help from professionals). An easier and potentially more effective approach is to focus on our strengths.

Strengths are personal qualities (e.g., curiosity or courage) that shape our interests, skills, and our sense of who we are as people. Those who use their strengths regularly tend to experience greater confidence and engagement — benefits you can also gain from spending time developing your strengths.

What are your strengths and how do you develop them? If you’ve never done so before, consider taking the free VIA character strengths survey. To develop one of your strengths, you have many options: read a relevant book, practice a related skill, or find a new way to apply your strength.

21. Talk for 5min about someone who helped you

On Day 5 I wrote about the recovery benefits of daily gratitude practice — which is typically studied in the form of gratitude lists or diaries. But you don’t have to keep these reflections to yourself!

Telling others about your positive experiences has some advantages over written lists. It requires longer reflection on more specific details of what you are grateful for as you reconstruct your memory into a narrative for an audience, which can enhance the experience of gratitude.

And the benefits aren’t just for you! The people who hear your narrative have a positive social interaction with you, one that may even contain useful information. And in this example (talking about someone who helped you), the helper you praise gets wider recognition for their help. Everyone wins!

22. Schedule time to do a thing you keep avoiding

The chances are high that you’re avoiding something. Maybe it’s a decision you’ve been putting off, a test you should study for, or a phone call you’ve been reluctant to make. Maybe it’s a medical appointment you intended to arrange weeks ago. Maybe you don’t have a legal will that ensures your loved ones are protected.

We all carry too much shame about things we haven’t done. I’m not just saying that because we shouldn’t feel ashamed (although that’s true — life is complicated, and whatever social media is telling you, I don’t know everyone who is on top of it all). I’m also saying it because the shame makes it worse.

Shame makes us more likely to keep procrastinating. If we’re embarrassed about things we haven’t done, thinking about them can become uncomfortable, and we may come to avoid that too — although a sense of shameful inaction may persist.

Today, I’m encouraging self-forgiveness. Accept that, as a human, you have limitations. And take some action towards some of the things you’ve been putting off.

I’m not here to tell you to scrap whatever you were planning for today and spend it all on whatever you’ve been avoiding (although you’re welcome to do that). But do something. Make the phone call. List the first steps you need to take. Allocate time in your calendar to do more. Then allow yourself to feel good about having moved forward.

23. Identify 3-5 actions that might help with stressful work demands

On Day 7, I wrote about looking closely at work demands you find stressful. On Day 15, I wrote about sorting these demands into categories:

  • Things you can change
  • Things others can change
  • Things that will not change

Today we’re going to consider actions you can take for demands in each category.

Things you can change: Don’t overwhelm yourself. Pick one demand and make a list of 3-5 steps you can take towards making it less stressful. This might be as simple as (1) schedule time to reflect on ways to lighten your load, (2) use that time to decide what you’re going to do differently, and (3) follow through with that decision (e.g., contact people who will be affected by your decision).

Things others can change: Same deal, only your focus is on what the other person/people can do, and how you can encourage them to do it. This might be as simple as (1) plan the case you can make to the person who has influence, (2) arrange a meeting or phone call (or write an email — but this may be less persuasive), and (3) follow through (e.g., report back on a return favour and ask about their progress).

Things that will not change: In this case, the approach is quite different. Instead consider the following five perspectives to identify the one(s) that will help you the most:

  • Take action on changeable demands to make the rest of your life less stressful, making it slightly easier to cope with this demand;
  • Practice more self-care so you can cope with stress a little better (e.g., ensure you are getting enough sleep, exercise, and social contact);
  • Change your behaviour to reduce the impact of the demand (e.g., if construction noise is waking you at 7am every day, try going to bed earlier so that you’ve had sufficient sleep by 7am).
  • Use cognitive reframing to see a stressful demand in a more positive way (e.g., instead of “I have lots of high-pressure public presentations to do”, try reflecting on this as, “I get the chance to share my knowledge with people who might benefit from it”)
  • Use mindful acceptance to acknowledge and accept the situation and your feelings as they are, and commit to actions that align with your personal values.
24. Try exercising during a break from work

On Day 8, I wrote about the recovery and stress management benefits of exercise. What exercise can you incorporate into your workday today? It can include stretching and yoga – whatever you can fit in.

25. Pick a goal you’d like to achieve in December

There are many benefits of goal-setting. For example, by setting specific, measurable goals, we gain a greater sense of what we should be doing and whether we’re making progress. But research on hope theory by Charles R Snyder and colleagues suggests another benefit — goals can help us to feel hopeful.

For many people, aspects of our lives can make us feel unhappy. We might have troubled relationships, unhealthy eating habits, or we may never seem to have time for things we want to do. Snyder and colleagues argued that one way to create feelings of hope in our lives is to identify something in our lives we would like to see improved, refine this into a goal, and to work towards accomplishing that goal.

Setting personal goal like this gives us a chance to focus less on what’s wrong and more on how we can make something better. And we can do this in relation to almost anything, including many of the domains we’ve discussed in the context of #Recovember, such as mastery activities / hobbies, interpersonal relationships, or physical exercise.

I’m encouraging people to set themselves a goal for December — a simple, achievable goal that won’t take too much time or effort, but something you might not prioritise. Then as you use some of your time away from work to progress your goal, you can enjoy the hopeful sensation of seeing yourself succeed.

26. Assess time and other resources your goal requires

Yesterday I recommended setting yourself a simple (achievable, but specific and measurable) goal to work towards through December as a source of hope that this one thing, at least, will improve. Today I’m suggesting you build a plan or “pathway” to achieving that goal.

According to Hope Theory, a goal is more likely to inspire hope if there is a pathway to facilitate goal progress. The clearer it is to us how we can get closer to our goal, the more confident we will feel that we can succeed.

There are a lot of different factors that come into making a goal pathway and I won’t go into them all. Today I’ll just present you with some questions that help me and may help you:

  • What tasks/steps are needed to achieve this goal? The more I break the work down into distinct steps, the easier I find it to start one task and then transition smoothly to the next.
  • Will I need any information or advice? If there are books, websites, or people I can go to for advice on how to perform one or more tasks, I include gathering that information a few steps before I’m likely to need it.
  • Will I need any other resources? If there’s anything I need to buy or borrow, that’s another task to include in my plan.
  • How much time will it all take? A sense of time commitment is useful for deciding when you can fit in work towards your personal goal. Now, many people (myself included) have trouble estimating time for projects, but I find it a little easier once I’ve broken a project down into tasks. I only use three time estimates: a half-day, 1 hour, and 15min. If a small task is likely to take more than 15 minutes, I estimate it will take an hour; if it’s likely to take more than an hour, I estimate it will take half a day; and if I estimate it will take more than half a day, I break it into smaller tasks. If the total time commitment seems too big, I revise the goal to ensure it is achievable.

Answering these questions should put you well on the way to having a clear pathway to achieving your hope-inspiring goal during your December downtime.

27. Scan, tighten, then relax your muscles

I’ve already discussed the importance of rest breaks (Days 5 & 11) and the impact of breathing exercises (Day 19). In my last post on relaxation behaviours people kinda-sorta know about but don’t practice, I’m doing body scans and progressive muscle relaxation.

A body scan involves focusing your attention on different parts of your body to detect signs of tension or discomfort. Progressive muscle relaxation involves systematically tightening (tensing) and then slowly releasing major muscle groups one by one. Applying these practices for just a few minutes can facilitate more effective relaxation and recovery during your downtime.

Start by lying on your back, preferably in a quiet, dark space. After some deep breathing (see Day 19), try focusing your attention on your feet. You don’t need to look at them, just take a few deep breaths while trying to feel the sensations of the skin and muscles of your feet (this gets easier with practice). Then tense the muscles in your feet by curling your toes tightly. Do this for about 5–10 seconds, noticing how different your feet feel, before releasing that tension, and pay attention to how the sensation in your feet changes.

Then, following the same process (scanning before and after), work your way up from your lower legs (you’ll need to point your toes), your upper legs (tighten muscles in your thigh and buttocks), your abdomen (tighten your belly), your hands, your arms, your shoulders, your neck, and your face.

The process facilitates relaxation and recovery in a variety of ways. Tightening and then releasing muscles helps directly by reducing muscle tension. Doing this not just for one muscle but for all of them, in combination with a body scan, facilitates relaxation and activation of the parasympathetic nervous system for a more complete relaxation. Practicing this technique regularly can also increase bodily awareness (through repeatedly comparing sensations in our muscles before, during, and after tension), which can helps you to notice when your muscles start to tense up, allowing you to take earlier action to prevent muscular problems.

28. Spend 30 min on a hobby or on arts/crafts

Wait, isn’t this exactly the same as Day 4? Well, it was good advice then, and it’s just as good today.

29. List 3 things from this month that went well

We’re nearly done with the penultimate month of 2025! How was yours?

On Day 5, I wrote about the benefits of daily gratitude reflections. If you missed out on that (check the included post for details), you can still get some benefits from reflecting over the whole month of November and identifying three things for which you feel grateful OR things you are glad went well.

30. Schedule times to work on your goal for December

We’re at the end of the month. What are we looking forward to getting done next month? If you followed my advice on Days 25 and 26, you have a hope-inspiring personal goal to work towards in December, and a plan for how to achieve it. Today, I’m just asking you to schedule some time in your calendars for this project so there’s a chance it will happen.

And we’re done! I hope some of these Recovember posts have helped you!

How Do I Participate in #RECOVEMBER?

It’s easy to participate in #RECOVEMBER! Just post the image of the #RECOVEMBER challenge schedule and share a description of what you’ve done (or what you’re planning to do) to enhance your recovery. For examples, check out my social media posts throughout November.