End of the Year Planning Tip #7 – Make Self-care a Priority

with Christa, the Christmas Elf with a Plan – 7 December

Christa just keeps bringing her End of the Year Planning Tips. Tips #7 is another important one: Make self-care a priority – plan for it. I have to agree, the best way to give something priority it to put it in our plans.

FYI – Christa’s earlier tips, starting with Tip #1, can be found here.

Let’s first discuss what self-care is and then ways to plan for it and give it priority.

What is Self-care?

When I retired a few years ago, I decided to start using a journal. As I typically do, I search the internet for different types of journals, see what others might be doing and get ideas of how to get started. I discovered a lot of emphasis on self-care. But what I saw then and what I understand now are not the same.

I saw a lot of ideas that were self-care in the form of pampering oneself via spa days and such. I thought it all sounded lovely, if you’re in to that. I’m not and actually find even manicures a little stressful. Maybe it’s because if I do my nails and mess up the polish by the next day, it doesn’t really bother me the way it has on the few occasions I’ve been convinced to go. And an actual trip to a spa, not even sure I could get myself there. I tried pampering myself at home with bubble baths and facials every now and then, but most days I was happy to just have shower. I am not saying that those are good ideas for self-care, they just weren’t for me.

Somewhere along the way I realized that true self-care is doing the things that help us maintain our health – physically and emotionally. We need (in no particular order):

• food & water,
• good hygiene,
• physical activity,
• rest,
• sleep,
• manageable stress,
• (good) relationships, and
• a safe environment.

I know there’s more specifics that could be added – like health care, church, and community. But I think the things I really want you to think about are sufficiently covered by this list. These are things that can affect our ability to perform an all areas of life, both personally and professionally.

Rest vs. Sleep

Did you read the list and say aren’t rest and sleep the same thing? I see them differently. Sleep is when I turn out the lights, lay down, close my eyes and go to sleep for a good period of full rest and recuperation. Rest doing something besides sleeping that allows your “recharge your batteries”, so to speak. For someone like myself, an introvert, I need short periods of downtime where I don’t have to interact with groups of people. I need quiet time. I need this time to let my thoughts quiet down and my brain to have a rest. I’ve recognized this need in one of my granddaughters and have attempted to explain to her younger sister that while we love her dearly, we need her to respect our need for quieter activities in between the more interactive activities in our days together.

For some of us rest is a quiet, solitary activity. Others, might find their rest in going out with friends. It is an activity we need to provide balance in our lives. This might also be why getting a manicure or visiting a spa isn’t my thing; neither is restful for me.

How do we use our planner to make self-care a priority? That’s a very good question.

Planning Self-Care

The way we make self-care a priority is to schedule or block out time for those activities in our schedules. They are not optional, low priority, or if-I-have-time tasks. They are the things we do to make sure we are able to be at our best for all those other things we need to do. If we aren’t taking care of ourselves, how can we expect to be a good spouse, parent, child, significant other, friend, employee, boss or colleague. So exactly how can we can these activities?

Imagine a chart with 7 columns and 24 rows representing a full week – 7 days and 24 hours per day. What if you blocked out the time you expect to be doing various activities. I would expect large blocks for work and for sleep, but what fills all the other spaces. When you go into more detail, you might have commuting time, weekly/monthly meeting events (church, club meetings, children’s activities). Maybe you have shopping, laundry, and even morning routine, and/or evening routine. Do you have meal prep? eating? cleaning? carrying out the trash? Do you blocks sectioned off for your go-to rest activities?

Establish Routines

Basic self-care needs should be on auto-pilot. Your routines and habits consistently ensure you eat well, drink water, exercise, and get enough sleep. Your routines and habits should also help with managing the stress that comes from your physical environment. And, yes, I’m talking about cleaning, laundry, and other household chores. If you basic self-care needs some improvement, then perhaps this is an opportunity for new goals and habits for the coming year.

You should have routines for mornings and evenings, at a minimum that ensure your day gets off to a good start and that you wind down and get to bed at a reasonable time. Many of the basic self-care activities may be part of these routines. You may want a separate routine for the household chores or consider trying meal planning if you want to ensure you have healthy meals that are easy to prepare on hand.

Routines can be documented like checklists for reference or tracking in your planner. Making charts with routines or chores for children is a good way to teach them good habits, too.

Scheduling Self-Care Activities

Some types of self-care need to be planned. These are things like spa visits, manicures, hair cuts, medical checkups, vacations, date nights, club meetings, church services, etc. Some of those are regularly occurring and easy to add to your calendar. And if you wondering why a put date nights, club meetings, and church services in a list of self-care activities, it is because those are where you are building relationships that are your support network. I also mentioned kid’s activities earlier, because we are better when our relationships are strong.

For these types of self-care activities, make a list and identify the frequency you need to schedule the activity at. For example, you might have:

• Date Night: Every 2 weeks, plan 2 weeks ahead.
• Hair cut: Every 6 weeks, schedule next appointment at current appointment.
• Eye exam: Annually, add to next year’s plan 11 months after current appointment with date of current appointment noted.
• One on One time with Son: Weekly, plan during weekly planning time.
• One on One time with Daughter: Weekly, plan during weekly planning time.
• Call parents: Weekly, Saturday at ~2pm
• Touch Base with Sister 1: Weekly
• Touch Base with Sister 2: Weekly

As you can see different types of things end up getting scheduled differently. Scheduling your next hair cut becomes part of the current hair cut appointment and gets written into your planner. Date night is similar, but a trigger somewhere in your weekly planning checklist might be a good way to not lose track. A planning checklist could help with planning time with kids or keeping touch with family and friends.

For call parents, I’d probably put in my planner and set a reminder on my phone. The eye exam is a little different. They don’t usually book 1 year out and insurance doesn’t let me go more than once a year for the annual check-up. So I use a future log and if my appointment is on 11 December this year, I would add a note to the November future log for next year reading “Schedule eye exam after 11 December”.

Maintaining Priority

Now you have an idea of how to capture and track self-care activities in your planner, how do you keep them from being pushed to the back burner. It can be easy for work to expand beyond “office hours”, especially if you work from home. We also frequently take on tasks that we don’t have time for in other areas of life. Volunteering for things in the community is certainly a good thing to do, but you sometimes need to pause and check that you aren’t already fully booked right now. It’s okay to say no now and plan to pitch in another time.

Set Boundaries

One way to keep work from taking over is to set boundaries. If you work from home, have defined work hours. If possible, have a separate work space. Before the end of your work day, whether you work from home or elsewhere, take a moment and write down in your planner where you are leaving off with your work and what you next steps in the morning should be. Note any thoughts, questions, or ideas that were on your mind. Tell yourself your work day is done and you’ll pick it back up in the morning. Allow yourself to clear those thoughts from your mind so that you can focus on your personal plans for the rest of the day. Create some work/life balance.

Learn To Say No

When it comes to volunteering to take on tasks in the community, our social circle, or our family, we frequently do so without even being asked. And personally, I do it without even thinking about the commitment I’m about to make. I am certainly not going to stop volunteering, but I do need to learn to think before I offer to take something on and maybe limit the amount of time and effort being offered.

Allow Yourself Grace

Lastly, I want to say give yourself grace. Beating yourself up because you didn’t get all the boxes on your task list checked-off or that you had to say no to volunteering for something because your planner said you were booked with “self-care” tasks, is not helpful. You have to take care of you before you can take care of others.

Summary

Christa’s End of the Year Tip #7, “make self-care a priority – plan for it”, is another one I need to be thinking about as I work on my goals for the new year. I need to review my routines and see what habits I need to work on to be certain I’m taking care of myself. I think I also want to be more intentional in caring for my relationship and mutual support between myself and inner circle of family and friends – for me and for them. And I need to establish those clear boundaries around my work hours and make sure my work and life stay in balance.

Take good care of yourselves and Happy Planning!

Linda