Daylight saving time ends this weekend. Here are some tips to stave off the winter blues

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This weekend marks the end of daylight saving time, when we turn our clocks back an hour on Sunday and enter the time of the year with the least amount of afternoon sunlight.

This time of year is hard for a lot of people, myself included. The earlier sunsets, leaving work or school in the dark, the colder weather, the dreariness of it all… it can be a lot. The winter doldrums (or if you’re Linda Belcher, the “doll drums”) can really be a challenge, even if you don’t have seasonal affective disorder.

Last fall, when I was desperately researching ways to stave off the winter blues, I came upon Bad Art Every Day on TikTok (the account is also on Instagram and Substack). Margaret Duncan, a Boston-area writer and psychiatrist who runs the account, was posting about something she created called “75 Grow.” It’s a gentler take on the 75 Hard program, where you follow a strict diet and exercise program every day for 75 days to “transform” yourself. Instead, 75 Grow focuses on growing three good habits for movement, avoiding avoidance and practicing creativity, or what she calls M.A.P. The specifics of these activities are up to you.

For “movement,” Duncan writes that “many of us want to move more, but some of us need to focus on restorative practices more.” She will often do something active but adventurous one day and then something slow and restorative another day.

For “avoiding avoidance,” it’s picking a task you don’t want to do but making it fun. She suggests setting a timer, making a fun drink and seeing what you can get done nightly as a gift to Future You.

And for “practicing creativity,” Duncan suggests finding a hobby or craft or just anything different you can do to practice not just consuming information (so no doomscrolling!) or doing things the same way you always do. In fact, Bad Art Every Day grew out of Duncan’s desire to work creativity into her life while working as a medical intern in Boston in 2022, with long shifts that saw her in and out of the hospital during the darkest hours of winter mornings and evenings.

“It’s kind of just grown since then to talk about different themes and to kind of integrate it with what I’ve learned in my therapy training part of psychiatry. I always want to offer information that’s informed by evidence, but that is a bit more whimsical and creative,” she told me.

This season, Duncan is running another cycle of “75 Grow,” so I decided to talk with her to get her thoughts on the program and what kind of advice she’d give to those of us who might be dreading the time change.

(An important caveat: Duncan stresses that, if you feel like you are really struggling with your mental health beyond some mild winter blues, you should talk to your doctor about seasonal affective disorder, because there are many effective treatments out there for it).

If you’re looking to prepare yourself for this winter, Duncan recommends four things you can do:

P.S.— What kind of things do you do to prepare for this season? Do you dread it, or do you look forward to it? Send us an email at wburnlet@bu.edu to let us know.