Pacing a Week With a Long-Term Condition
For living with a condition whose cost varies, where a good day borrows from tomorrow. It treats energy as a budget, puts the rest in the calendar before the plans, splits the big job across three days, and keeps a short note of what cost what.
Pacing · Body · Self-Compassion · 9 items · once a week
The checklist
- Write what you have to spend this week — energy is a budget before it is a feeling.
- Put the rest in the calendar first — rest that is left over never happens.
- Stop each task before you have to — finishing on empty costs tomorrow as well.
- Plan a quiet day either side of the big one — a wedding takes three days, not one.
- Break the one big job into three — the same work over three days costs less.
- Notice the good day for what it is — a good day is not proof the pacing was wrong.
- Keep one short note of what cost what — the pattern is only visible written down.
- Say no with the reason left out — “I can't this week” is a complete sentence.
- Let the plan change without a verdict — a body that varies is not a failure of will.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it once a week, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.