Searching for Mental Clarity Through a Week of Taking Cold Showers

What happened and how it felt.

Cold showers and productivity have long been linked. Ever since I got into the idea of better myself and starting my journey towards self-actualization I’ve seen all kinds of article and videos about the wonders that come from taking cold showers.

And now that I’m finally starting this journey, it felt like a natural place to start. It’s a bit of a daunting prospect, seven days of ice cold misery is. But I’m up for the challenge, anything that can help improve myself is worth pursuing.

I’m a little scared going (of the unknown more than anything else), but I’m excited too. Excited to take the first step, but even more so to grow. That’s all I’m looking for in this first experiment: the opportunity to grow and evolve as a person.

The water’s so cold, so intense that I can hardly stand it.

As I turned the shower on and the ice cold water came out for the first time, I started to realize just how bad of an idea this really was. How stupid could I be, entering this experiment willingly.

But I’ve made a promise to myself, and I’ve got every intention of seeing it through. Failure is not an option. I’ve got to at least try, it’s the least I can do for myself.

Allowing myself to quit would be the same as choosing to fail, and that’s a habit I can’t afford to create. It’s much easier to build a bad habit than it is to break it. Avoiding it completely is the only way forward.

So I pushed onward, grit my teeth, stepped inside, and realized that piercing cold of the shower wasn’t going to last forever. After a couple of minutes, it started to subside. Then I switched the water off and it was all over. I stood there, naked and shivering, but knew I’d taken my first step.

In spite of all the discomfort, I felt accomplished stepping out of the shower. I’d set a goal and stuck to it, even though I was freezing and otherwise miserable.

Starting the day off by doing something I didn’t want to do, pushing myself into the uncomfortable unknown before my morning coffee.

Reaching the plateau, flattening the curve.

While the first three days got worse and worse, the fourth brought the long-awaited breakthrough. Finally, I started feeling some of the productivity boosts that I’d read all about, the reason I decided to do this in the first place.

After each shower I felt oddly energized, much more so than I thought I would. The best way I can describe it is sort of like an all-natural shot of espresso, and I found myself getting a lot of work done after every cold shower, even the ones that were insufferably miserable.

This boost in productivity was amazing, and had me addicted at once. Like many of the other people I’d watched and read online, I saw only the good. But during one of my nightly journaling sessions I came to another realization: the inexplicable crash.

Everyday, about three or four hours after getting out of the shower, I’d feel a massive crash and downturn in energy levels. The only thing I can compare it to is the feeling you get after drinking way too much coffee. Imagine that, but just a little worse.

Right at the end, things are starting to get better, manageable.

Finally, on the seventh and last day of the experiment, the showers stopped feelings so uncomfortably cold. Don’t get me wrong, they were still terribly cold (the furthest thing from it), but the cold wasn’t so much of a burden. They’d started to become manageable.

By the time the seventh day rolled around, the cold wasn’t even my biggest problem. The crashes and comedowns were. Upon reflection (usually while journaling), I started to realize that I was drinking three or four times the amount of coffee that I normally did.

And while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I think it’s important to take note of everything that changes when doing a personal development experiment. Even the smallest of things have a way of adding up when you give them enough time to grow and multiply.

While something as small as drinking a lot more coffee isn’t big enough of a thing for me to abandon cold showers, I want to get in the practice of taking a complete and total audit of the pros and cons of these experiments. That’s the only way I’ll be able to build the life that I want and maximize my potential.

Taking cold showers increased my productivity, but was it worth it?

I’ve spent the majority of the last week contemplating what I’m going to do moving forward, what the next step is. While the productivity benefits have been undeniable, I’ve lost one of the most tranquil parts of my day: a nice hot shower to kick off the day.

It’s the one time in the day where I can close my eyes, take in the music playing around me, and just let the warm water cascade around my shoulders, work and school the last thing on my mind. There’s nothing quite like it.

That’s what pushed my decision over the line. Cold showers aren’t for me, and I don’t think they ever will be. I need a bit of calmness and tranquility to offset the blur of confusion that is work and school. A hot shower followed by an even hotter cup of coffee is the perfect way of doing that for me.