Plan Your Mental Health Days in Advance
Every month I try to mark at least one day off as a Day with no plans. During this day, I do what would otherwise be considered “nothing”; I read, I sleep, maybe revisit my favorite movie or TV show, and I spend a lot of time looking into space and just thinking.
If I don’t have a day like this on my schedule often enough, I feel it – which is why I try to prioritize days without plans as often as possible.
These days are commonly referred to as “mental health days” by people, except I call them “days with no plans,” because the name makes it very clear if I’m actually taking them. But schedule them ahead of time – instead of getting so bogged down in work, plans and commitments that I kind of end up saying, “I can’t work anymore this afternoon” on Thursday, followed by “oh shit, now I have to make up for what I didn’t. ”Saturday helps me stay balanced in a world that constantly tends to burn out.
SELF recently posted a post on how to have a successful mental health day , and they also suggest planning your mental health days in advance:
In an ideal world, mental health days would be something that you automatically include in your schedule to avoid getting into a place where you desperately need a break, says David Clough , licensed family and family therapist and founder of Skylight Counseling Center in Chicago. … We notice early signs of fatigue at work and instead of overcoming it, we actively take care of our mental health, including an occasional weekend of recovery and self-care .
While some of us may have enough vacation time (or freelance flexibility) to take on mental health days during our work week, scheduling mental health days in advance means you can schedule them for days when you don’t need to. work. This way, you can use your vacation for a real vacation , which is just as important to prevent burnout.
However, if you need a mental health day that has not yet been scheduled, you can use sick leave to cover it – provided you have sick leave, of course. It is also worth noting that many mental disorders cannot be planned in advance; depression and anxiety flare up and sometimes you can’t control when you need a little rest.
But if you can set aside a full day each month for mental health and self-care, include it in your calendar. Because sometimes the best time to have a mental health day is before you need it.