CALM Recharge
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
A test for whether a break actually restores energy. CALM stands for Competence (you feel yourself getting better at it), Autonomy (you're in control of it), Liberty (it's detached from what you do for work), and Mellow (low stakes, no deadline). Ali's starting observation is that what we reach for when drained — scrolling TikTok, Instagram, YouTube on the sofa — almost never leaves us recharged, while the things that do require slightly more effort: a walk, ten minutes of stretching, playing guitar, reading. Real recovery therefore has to be chosen deliberately rather than defaulted into, and slotted into the day rather than saved for the end of it.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Write two lists
List what you actually do when drained, then list the times you genuinely felt recharged afterwards. Notice how little overlap there is.
Pro tip Ask when scrolling last left you restored — the honest answer is usually never.
- 2
Score candidate activities against CALM
Competence, autonomy, liberty, mellow. Activities that hit most of the four tend to be creatively recharging; activities that hit none tend to be numbing.
- 3
Accept that recharge costs a little effort
Going for a walk is harder than picking up the phone. The effort gap is exactly why the default option wins and why the choice has to be made consciously.
Watch out Social platforms are engineered to be the easiest available option in your lowest-energy moments.
- 4
Build a short menu of go-to recharge activities
Have three or four ready — guitar, stretches, a walk, a book — so the decision is already made when your energy dips.
Pro tip Keep the props physically to hand: guitar in the room, yoga mat within reach.
- 5
Use the in-between moments
Seven spare minutes between tasks is enough for the guitar or five minutes of stretching. Checking email in that gap only adds items to your to-do list and stress with it.
Pro tip A study Ali cites found the most productive workers averaged roughly 43 minutes of work to 17 minutes of break each hour.
Watch out Standing outside in the sun for ten minutes produces a physiologically different response than clearing an inbox you can't action.
- 6
Declare a write-off day when the tank is empty
Rather than spending a day in guilty limbo neither working nor resting, actively decide the day is written off so recharge can actually happen.
Pro tip Naming it out loud converts guilt into a choice.
In the wild
Coming home from a full day as a doctor, Ali would rather edit a video for two hours than watch Netflix for two hours. Editing scored on all four CALM elements: competence, because his skills visibly improved each time; autonomy, because he could do what he wanted; liberty, because it was completely different from the day job; and mellow, with relaxing music in the background and no real stakes.
→ He'd get up from the desk feeling he'd done something good, which is why weekly uploads stayed consistent for years.
Team members consistently tell Ali they expected him to be far more productive than he is. Between filming videos, with seven minutes spare, he won't check email — he grabs the guitar, walks around the house singing, or unrolls a yoga mat for five minutes of stretching. Colleagues initially find it odd, then notice they've been sitting all day and join in on the stretches.
→ He describes the practice as enormously recharging, and it's now visibly built into his working day.
Common mistakes
Calling passive scrolling a break
It's the easiest thing to reach for when drained and almost never restores energy. Choosing it repeatedly is a large part of how depletion burnout builds.
Filling every gap because rest feels unproductive
A fifteen-minute gap spent skimming emails you can't answer just adds to the to-do list. It feels productive and is worse than standing outside for ten minutes.
Doing what you feel like instead of what recharges you
What you feel like doing is usually the lowest-effort option. The choice has to be made on what will produce the feelings you want in an hour, not the ones you want now.
From the transcript
“there's an acronym an acronym I talk about in one of the the final chapters called calm c a l m yeah which is like…”
“where we feel as if we are getting better at doing the thing autonomy where we feel like we have we have control”
“there are things that we do when we're drained of energy and then there are things that recharge our energy and there's generally not much…”
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