You know those days when it feels as though life is kicking you in the teeth? You get an unexpected bill for hundreds of dollars. You lose concentration and back into a parked car. You have a fight with your partner. You’re called into preschool because your child has been misbehaving. A beloved relative keeps forwarding you conspiracy theories, and you can’t take it anymore.

We all have those days. And yet we still need to get things done. Here are some tips for pushing through. When handled right, work can have a grounding effect that can help with whatever life is throwing at you.

Focus on a familiar activity.

Find a task on your to-do list that’s satisfying but so familiar that it’s not taxing — for example, writing the newsletter you’ve been putting together every month for years. Then do it.

Why does this help? When we perform highly familiar tasks, it’s almost as though muscle memory kicks in. All the steps are so practiced that it’s easy to get absorbed in them and to go with the flow. A task you can start and finish in one sitting will also give you a sense of accomplishment.

Tackle an unfamiliar task you’ve been avoiding.

This tip seems contradictory to the previous one, but it works through a different mechanism. Let me explain.

Yesterday I got some bad news. I threw myself into writing a couple of blog posts, as per the last tip. But then I did a task of the “work — but not really work” variety that I’d been putting off. Specifically, I needed to reread my last book to make sure I wasn’t accidentally repeating any points or examples in my upcoming one.

Tasks that don’t seem to justify a place in your usual workday — but that you struggle to do in your time off — can be a perfect choice on a low-vibe day. Doing something you’ve been avoiding will help you feel like a competent human whose life is on track.

You might also try things you’d typically overthink — for example, reaching out to a person in your field whom you’d love to work with but don’t know personally — or a task that’s aspirational and creative. Why not put together a talk or an article about why a way of working that’s standard in your industry is misguided, or make a prototype of that pet project you’ve had in mind? When people feel low, scared, or short on self-confidence, they tend to retreat. When you act as though you have confidence in your ideas and capacities, it provides an antidote to those feelings and can stop the negative spiral.