Planning Worksheets:  A Tool for Pacing

By Bruce Campbell

(Note: Part 1 of a two-part series on planning worksheets. Part 2 discusses the Relapse Worksheet and the Special Events worksheet.)

If you have felt frustrated by cycles of push and crash, and would like to use pacing as a way to bring stability to your life, one tool to consider is the planning worksheet. Having written daily and weekly schedules can help you control symptoms by reminding you of safe activity limits. This article will show you how. (You can learn about other pacing strategies in the chapter on pacing in our course textbook.) 

Before using the worksheets, you should have an idea of your limits, the more specific the better. For a quick overall sense of your current capabilities, assess yourself using our Rating Scale. Your self-rating will give you an idea of how many hours a day you can be active. For a more detailed understanding of limits, fill out the Energy Envelope form, which is described in the chapter on the Energy Envelope in our textbook. 

Daily Schedule

The Daily Schedule worksheet gives you a way to translate your understanding of your capabilities into a daily routine of activities and rest.

Here’s how one person made use of the Daily Schedule worksheet. Jane, who is married and in her 50’s, contracted FM about 10 years ago. At the time she started using the worksheets, she rated herself between 30 and 35 on our Rating Scale, about average for people in our program. She lives with her husband. Her two adult-age daughters live nearby. Given her self-rating, she believed she could be active about three hours a day and could leave the house most days of the week. She wanted to work toward having a detailed schedule, but decided to start with just a few routines. Her initial priorities were getting good sleep, eating well and exercise.

Since getting good sleep was her highest priority, she began with by writing out her bedtime routines. (See box, below.) Knowing that she has trouble getting to sleep if she is active in the hour before bedtime, her first item specified a winding down routine. She also included items that reflected other things she knows about herself. She had found that taking a bath helps her relax. She also discovered that she falls asleep more easily if she spends a few minutes at night making a To Do list for the next day; having a list reduces her tendency to ruminate about the future. Since morning is usually the time her fibro fog is strongest, she puts out her clothes the night before. All these were included in her bedtime routines.

She decided that her morning and afternoon routines would focus on eating two healthy meals, stretching and taking pre-emptive rests. Since afternoon is her best time of day, she scheduled her daily outing then. (See Weekly Schedule for specifics.) The only thing she asked of herself during the evening was to prepare dinner for her husband and herself. (He gets his own breakfast and buys lunch at work.) The items she put on her schedule were not the only things she did during a day. Rather, they were those things she wanted to focus on at the time she started using the worksheet. As she succeeded with this first set, she added more items

Weekly Schedule

Because not every day is the same, it is also useful to have a weekly schedule. When Jane filled out the form below, she believed she could have one “event” each day without intensifying her symptoms. Since afternoon is her best time, she scheduled most of her activity for that time. She created the following worksheet as a typical week. She knew that, if something unexpected came up, she would have to delete an item from her schedule. Because exercise is important to her, she planned to go to the Y for a water exercise program two days a week. She set aside one afternoon for grocery shopping and other errands. Two other events were her weekly cooking, and time for laundry and housecleaning. Finally, she scheduled two afternoons a week for appointments or socializing. Her one evening event was having her daughters over for dinner on Sunday.

Jane soon concluded that her weekly schedule was unrealistic. She discovered that if she tried to do something every day, she needed to rest at least one afternoon a week and sometimes two. That meant that she could not schedule an activity for each day. The most her body could tolerate was five or six days a week. She also found that she could not both fix dinner and entertain her daughters on Sunday evening. Her body counted that as two events, which was beyond her limit of one event per day.

Her experience led her to conclude that her true rating was probably between 25 and 30, not 30 to 35 she had believed previously. After thinking more about her limits and talking with her family, she came up with a revised schedule. (See below.) She switched her major weekly cooking from Sunday to Saturday. At her request, her husband agreed to do the weekly grocery shopping. He and her daughters agreed to trade off preparing the family dinner on Sunday. Jane decided to free Friday afternoon for rest by spreading her laundry and housecleaning across the week rather than devoting Friday afternoon to them. She recognized that this experiment might not work and decided that, if the revised schedule proved too much, her next step would be to ask her husband to help with chores or to hire someone.

Other Ways to Use Writing for Health

The combination of pen and paper can be a powerful tool to improve your health. Here are other ways to use writing to support your health, all described in articles on this site: 

Resources

For printable versions of the Daily Schedule and the Weekly Schedule forms, and all the logs, forms and worksheets discussed on this site, go to the Logs and Forms page.