How to Get Out of a Funk Fast, at Home or at Work

A funk is the flat, stuck kind of day. The to-do list hasn't moved since breakfast, every task looks twice its real size, and scrolling feels easier than starting anything. Cleveland Clinic psychotherapist Amy Brodsky calls going through a funk or rut "extremely common," and says most last a bad day or two. If you want to know how to get out of a funk faster than that, change your physical state first and let the mood follow. Planning a better tomorrow from the couch keeps you exactly where you are.

Each tactic below breaks the pattern from a different side. Stack two or three and the whole thing takes under 20 minutes.

Move first, for ten minutes

Robert Thayer, a psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, spent years comparing quick fixes for low energy. In one study he put a candy bar against a brisk 10-minute walk. People were more tense and tired an hour after the candy bar than before it, while the short walk gave a lift that lasted longer.

Later work points the same way. A 2000 paper in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine by Panteleimon Ekkekakis and colleagues ran four studies of 10 to 15 minute walks and found a shift toward higher activation and a more positive mood each time. In 2017, Patrick O'Connor's team at the University of Georgia gave 18 short-sleeping college women either 50 mg of caffeine (about a can of soda) or 10 minutes of walking up and down stairs. The stair walkers reported more energy than the caffeine group.

Ten minutes is short enough that you can't argue yourself out of it. Stairs, a lap of the block, a few songs of dancing in the kitchen. Any of it counts.

Get into daylight

Indoor light is dim by comparison with outside. In a small study presented at SLEEP 2009, Toshiharu Takahashi's team at Hosei University in Tokyo kept 10 volunteers aged 18 to 24 under ordinary room light (under 200 lux) one day and bright light (over 3,000 lux) another. Under bright light they were less sleepy and faster on a selective attention task.

The easy version is to take the walk from the last section outside. If you're tied to a desk, sit facing a window and open the blinds all the way.

Change the room you're stuck in

A funk tends to settle into one chair, one screen and one view. Moving your body somewhere new shakes the loop loose. Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz at Stanford tested 176 people across four experiments, published in 2014, and found creative output rose by an average of 60 percent in one experiment when people walked instead of sat. Walking on an indoor treadmill facing a blank wall did about as well as walking outdoors, so the movement did the work more than the scenery.

Practical moves that count as a change of scene:

• Take the laptop to a different room or a café for one hour
• Do the next phone call standing up or walking
• Swap the playlist, the coffee spot or the route home
• Clear one surface (the desk, the bench) before sitting back down

How to get out of a funk at work

At work you can't always leave for a walk, so the fastest lever is one finished thing. Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer studied nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from 238 people across seven companies for their 2011 book The Progress Principle. Of everything that lifted people's mood and motivation during a workday, the biggest was making progress on meaningful work, and small steps counted.

Pick the smallest task on the list that you can finish in 15 minutes. Reply to the one email you've been avoiding, file the expense, send the draft. Cross it off where you can see it. Then pick the next one.

If your flat stretch lands at the same time every day, usually mid-afternoon, our post on the afternoon slump and what to do about it covers that pattern on its own.

How to snap out of a funk in ten seconds

The quickest exit is a sharp hit to the senses. Cold water on your face, a strong peppermint, stepping out into wind. The jolt pulls your attention out of your head and back into your body, and once you're there the next step is easier to take.

Our pick for this is Dragon Breath, a chilcuague mouth spray. Chilcuague (Heliopsis longipes, also called golden root or raíz de oro) is a root from the Sierra Gorda region of Central Mexico, across Guanajuato, Querétaro and San Luis Potosí. Mexican ethnobotanists led by Cilia-López recorded people there chewing it and cooking with it as a spice. The root carries affinin (also called spilanthol), measured at 6.9 to 8.5 mg per gram of root by HPLC. You can read more about the plant in our full guide to chilcuague.

Here's what one spray is like. For a second it tastes earthy and a little peppery. Within about 10 seconds a bright electric buzz spreads across the tongue and mouth, then your mouth floods with water. A clean, fresh feeling lingers after. The flat fog of the afternoon gets interrupted by something you can't ignore, and you come out the other side switched on, present and ready for whatever's next.

One customer, in a reaction video moments after a single spray, put it in two words: "Definitely energized."

The spray format is what makes it usable mid-funk. The 50 ml bottle lives in your pocket or bag, one spray is all it takes (up to five once you know the feeling), and you get 250+ sprays per bottle. Keep it next to the keyboard and give it one spray before the task you've been putting off. The extract stays sealed in Miron violet glass, which keeps light and air off it, so the last spray is as sharp as the first. A bag of loose root or powder sitting open in a drawer can't say that.

The root is wild-harvested from growth zones the Mara team selects with the help of local elders, then dual-extracted in organic solutions. It's vegan, gluten free, sugar free and non-GMO.

On a flat afternoon, try this order. One spray, ten minutes of stairs or a walk outside, then the smallest task on your list. By the time you sit back down, the day has moved.

Dragon Breath considerations

If you're pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or allergic to plants in the daisy family, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask

How long does a funk usually last?

Cleveland Clinic's Amy Brodsky describes most funks as a bad day or two. Getting moving, getting outside and finishing one small task are the quickest ways to shorten it.

What is the fastest way to get out of a funk?

Do something physical in the next minute. A 10-minute walk outdoors puts movement and daylight together, and a sharp sensory reset like a spray of Dragon Breath lands within about 10 seconds.

What does Dragon Breath taste like?

Earthy and a little peppery for a second, then a bright buzz across the tongue and mouth takes over. Your mouth waters fast and a clean, fresh feeling stays for a while after.

How many sprays of Dragon Breath should I use?

Start with one spray into your mouth. Once you know the feeling you can go up to five, and each 50 ml bottle holds 250+ sprays.