If you have depression, do you find that accomplishing just one small thing can reset your motivation?

This is so typical, that this phenomenon is used routinely in therapy.

Sometimes, but it’s not consistent. Just as often it does not reset me when I hope it will. But it’s still worth attempting, for the times that it does work :) I’ve found that if I force myself to accomplish multiple things that I’ve been procrastinating on in a short time span, say 3 things I’ve been meaning to do, all within 10–15 minutes of each other, my chances of ‘resetting’ myself goes way up.

Usually not. Usually accomplishing something when I am depressed leaves me exhausted. I afterwards would probably think I don’t know how I even got through it.

Yeah, usually I’m like @JLeslie in that something like that will exhaust me. I have found that the resetting is what motivates me, and often I don’t know how I was reset. It’s frustrating, as I’d like to be able to duplicate the event when I’m in a hole.

Yes so for me. I woke up very anxious and depressed yesterday and daunted by an airline booking I had to change. After I had managed to accomplish it, I felt quite a bit better.

I don’t think of depression as being just one day. I may use the phrase I feel depressed for a down day, but for my answer above I was thinking of depressions as lasting at least a few weeks, down in the hole as @JilltheTooth says. Sometimes I am teetering around the hole, haven’t fallen in yet, and I get lucky and wind up falling back onto the ground, rather than going down into the pit.

I have this thing where if I get started, I hate to stop until I’ve finished. So doing something—anything—that gets me started can be the biggest thing to get going and keep on going. Having help, also is a good technique because I feel very obligated to other people. If someone is there, I can’t let them down. I have to do what I said I would do.

I’m exhausted now because I just said goodbye to the last two presenters at a conference I organized. I’m thinking of going home early. Lying down a bit.

No, not really. This happens to me when I’m not depressed, one small project can snowball into extra productive days… but not when I’m depressed, no.

I don’t really get depressed although some say that I cause it. I find fixing problems give me a real rush and I always feel good after solving a really difficult problem.

It’s a good thing that I get that rush because my job is troubleshooting difficult and unusual problems.

Yes, when I’m clinically depressed accomplishing even one small task can help lift my spirits just enough to move on to another task.

@Hawaii_Jake How are you feeling?

Totally. Sometimes I have weekdays off by myself when everyone I know is working. When one of those days corresponds with a funk, just getting up and getting dressed is an accomplishment (but usually leads to other good things).

@janbb : I’m regaining my strength and my appetite is coming back. Thanks for asking.

I notice more when things go to shit. If something happens where I let someone down, or fucked up making a lunch for someone…. I can’t get over it. The whole day is fucked….. I am devastated. Once…. My young son’s lunch ended up in my older, autistic son’s back pack. I don’t know how it happened. My autistic son took it and put it in his bag….or I did, not thinking… no idea…. but the day became so traumatic that the county mental health nurses had to visit me because I could not cope with the fact that the morning routine was messed up and that I blamed myself and cursed the situation I was in. I still get upset thinking about it.

Well I’ve been pretty depressed for a while and for me it takes so much energy just to even get up and do things. I guess I don’t really push myself to accomplish even a small thing like that…

Actually the only thing that worked for me was Paxil. Even major accomplishments didn’t mean nothing to me when I got that low and it felt more like I was forcing myself through. Sometimes we can get the occasional blues that me feel like a depression but when I had a fullblown depression nothing made me feel better about myself.