P is for Pacing

Join me on a journey towards a simple, sustainable and meaningful life. Throughout November we will be exploring each category of the A-Z guide to a simple, sustainable and meaningful life. Today we’re looking at P… Pacing.

This guide has been written from the point of view of someone living with chronic illness but the topics and concepts discussed are relevant to everyone and anyone.

P is for Pacing

A form of budgeting time and energy, pacing is an important tool in our toolbox for a simple, sustainable and meaningful life with chronic illness (and I would dare to say without one).

I’ve written a fair bit about pacing in the past as I set my original boundaries, and attempted to stick to them and slowly increase them. Even though I started pacing over 2 years ago, it is still something that I struggle with.

Every time life changes I need to readjust what I’m doing and try to set myself some form of routine or schedule that allows me to pace the new activities in with my old ones.

For example, when talking about budgeting I mentioned that I am aiming for 4-6,000 steps a day, with 4,000 being my minimum. The last week or so though that hasn’t been the case. Something has changed – the weather, amount of work I’m doing, or the number of social events I’m attending – I’m not entirely sure what, but it has led to a set back in my step count and an increase in my fatigue and pain levels. I’ve almost halved my minimum step count and need to work slowly to build it up again after my symptoms settle down.

The example above is to do with physical pacing (exercise) but you can apply the same technique to other aspects of your life. This is especially important when trying to simplify your life.

The technique I’m attempting to implement at the moment to help me pace my activities and time much better is to set a rough daily/weekly schedule that will help me decide if I have to say no to an activity.

This post is coming in late, and almost didn’t happen today, because I have been trying to stick to this schedule and my appointments came first this morning.

Do you have techniques you use to pace?