Add Self-Service to Your to-Do List
For the past couple of years, I’ve been using a bullet log to keep track of all sorts of things. Work assignments and appointments, my son’s soccer games and karate lessons, my workouts, even what I cooked for dinner. (Tracking dinner is especially helpful when I’m in a rut – spaghetti again ? – because I can go back a couple of months and rediscover a recipe we loved but immediately forgot about.)
I know bullet logging is not for everyone (if you think “bullet, now what?” We have a good explanation ). But I’ve always preferred a physical planner to a digital calendar, and using different colored pens for different topics – orange for exercise, brown for food, blue for work assignments – has become a simple thing that I love. At the end of the week, I have a colorful visual representation of how I spent my time, and that can be quite eloquent.
However, it recently occurred to me that most of what I track in the log I should be doing. Phone calls I need to make, checks I need to write, places I need to be. And this year, I set myself the goal of doing more of the things that I want to do. Things that relax and energize me. Simple things, cheap things. Take more baths. Drink more tea. Read more books. Meditate more consistently. Everything I love to do doesn’t really take a lot of time, but it gets lost in my daily life because it’s not intentionally planned. Because it’s not something I need to cross off the list before the end of the day.
So I decided to start tracking my self-care at the same time as my work appointments and meal plans. For me, self-care is now written in hot pink. And the goal at the end of each week is to see a significant amount of pink appear on the page. At least one note a day, even if it’s as simple as going to bed early. The urge to write something in pink prompts me to reflect on whether I took some time during the day to think about how I feel or what I need to do to recharge.
And you don’t have to be a color-coded journalist to keep track of yourself. You can write this down in your regular weekly planner, write this down on the free wall calendar you got at your child’s school, or schedule a regular self-service evening appointment on your Google calendar. If you live off a constant diet of to-do lists, put that on your to-do list. Whatever system you use to get the job done, you can also use it to be in charge of taking care of yourself.