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This week we’re diving into a very specific topic, a tool that I have used and that I really want to encourage you to explore and use too, as you go along your way on your Burnout journey.

I’m talking, of course, about Planners.

A Planner, in this context, is a kind of journal/calendar kind of thing. It doesn’t have to look a specific way exactly, everyone’s going to have a planner that works for them and it might look different to you than it does for me - that’s okay.

Here’s why using a Planner can be really practically helpful when you’re recovering from Burnout:

When our little frazzled brains drag ourselves out of the boiling pot of Burnout, they’ve been pretty bashed about. There’s brain fog, often anxiety or panic attacks, there’s exhaustion and fatigue, general confusion. It’s a mess. What you really need is some very simple structure.

I remember having this conversation really early on, about this concept of ‘Achievement and Reward’. This really simple human brain hack. And it made so much sense to me, especially later on when I started to think of it in terms of Burnout.

At the time, the aim was to bring some structure to my day. My therapist had me writing down everything I did each day. To begin with, I wrote down things like meals, yoga classes, therapy sessions, doctor’s appointments. And then she pushed me to write more stuff, every single little achievement - which at the time I didn’t recognise as an achievement. So, I had to write down things like ‘got out of bed’, ‘had a shower’, ‘made a pot of coffee’, ‘put some washing on’. Really simple stuff, but at the time all of that stuff really was hard to do, and all I wanted to do was lie on the couch and watch another Netflix series from start to finish. I was still mostly doing that, to be honest, but keeping a more accurate account of the actual little things I was doing through the day helped me to realise that I actually WAS doing stuff. It made me look at my day differently, it made me feel more productive - even when 90% of my time I was falling asleep on the couch with The Witcher on in the background.

The human brain is infinitely complex, but in some ways it’s also very simple. As human beings, we thrive off a pattern of Achievement and Reward. When this is balanced, we are balanced. So when we are achieving things, and recognising, being present for those things, and celebrating those achievements with some kind of reward afterwards, that’s when we’re balanced and sort of running properly.

When that goes out of balance, that’s when things go awry. This is how I look at it now, in regards to Burnout. A lot of the time we hit Burnout because of overachieving, for a long time. When life is all achievement and no reward, no sitting in the moment, no recognition or external validation, or INTERNAL validation for that matter, we are out of balance. When we’re going from stress to stress to stress, never getting to enjoy the outcome of all that stress because we’re just moving onto the next stress, we’re never completing the cycle. The stress cycle, the achievement and reward cycle, it’s all in the same Venn diagram. When we’re all about achieve, achieve, achieve, those achievements ultimately lose their meaning and we end up disconnected, apathetic and Burned Out.

Alternatively, when life is all REWARD and no achievement, we are just as out of balance. You know when you sit on the couch and binge something, and every three episodes Netflix pops up like ‘are you still watching?’ and you’re like, ‘OF COURSE I AM NETFLIX STOP JUDGING ME!’ But you know, there is only so long you can sit and watch stuff before it does start to just wash over you, it starts to lose its meaning. I mentioned The Witcher, that was one of the shows I binged in like, a day, when I was in Burnout Recovery. My sister recently caught up on Season One before she watched the second season which I haven’t gotten around to yet, and she was talking to me about all this stuff from Season One and I was just listening like… I have no idea what you’re talking about. I honestly don’t remember any of it, so I need to go back and watch it again. I needed to do that with most things I watched back then, and with most conversations I had. Thank goodness I wrote so much down in my journal because otherwise I would be useless at my job right now.

So anyway, the point is that if your ‘reward’ is chilling on the couch watching Netflix, but that is ALL you do, then it stops having meaning as a reward. It’s just, your default state. Same that if you’re just achieving constantly, if it doesn’t have that reward, that moment of acknowledging the achievement, celebrating it, being present for it, then again, that just becomes your default state.

We can hack this system by acknowledging Achievement and Reward in its very simplest forms. And that’s where using a Planner comes in.

When you’re in Burnout Recovery, you’re all fuzzed up, you don’t know what’s going on. A Planner can first of all be really helpful to bringing some simple structure into your days ahead of time. If you have appointments, yoga classes, coffee dates, coaching sessions, you can pop them in there. So already you look ahead to your week and you know what you need to do and when.

From there, it becomes more of a working record of activity. I kept my Planner in hand constantly when I was in Early Recovery. I wrote down everything. I got out of bed? I wrote that achievement down in the planner. I made a healthy breakfast? It went in. Shower? Write it down. Meditate for ten minutes? Amazing. Get out of the house and walk to the shop? WOW, that’s going in and it’s being highlighted green.

Every day, I could see that I was doing stuff. And every time I recognised one of these achievements, I was able to bring in an element of reward.

This worked on two levels - sometimes it was an actual reward, like letting myself watch an episode of something funny and uplifting after I’d managed to complete my morning routine. Or buying myself a nice cup of tea and sitting down with it if I’d managed to venture out for a walk. If I made it out to a Yoga class I’d get home and lie down on the couch, and listen to a podcast. 

Sometimes, it didn’t need to be an actual thing that I then got to do, sometimes it was simply an opportunity to acknowledge and give myself a kind of ‘pat on the back’ well done.

It was all a really sort of baby steps way of relearning how to human, after completely falling apart.

There is something about writing things down, writing them by hand, that makes them meaningful. This is an actual thing, our brains perceive things differently when we write them by hand than they do when we type them out digitally. So you might think, well, I don’t need to use a Planner because I have my iCal or my Trello board, or whatever you use. But that’s not what this is about. It’s less about telling you where you need to be and when, instead it’s a tool to help you to be where you are and to recognise that.

One of the things I did later on in my Recovery, before I started coaching and whatnot, was grab some planner pages and mock them up as a typical day in the week of my old life. It helped me to see really clearly how so much of it was about achievement, achievement, achievement, and how the rewards that might have been there were pushed aside. It also showed me how I didn’t value any achievements apart from work - I didn’t recognise doing things for myself as achievements.

If you are starting out on your Burnout Recovery journey, try this notion of bringing ‘Achievement and Reward’ into your day. Recognise each little thing you do, and give yourself whatever reward you need after it. Notice how your mind reacts when you do that. What thoughts pop into your head? If I let myself sit down after doing something simple, though draining at the time, my mind was always telling me I was lazy, I was hiding and pretending to be sick, I was doing something wrong - and to begin with that resulted in me sitting for longer, ruminating and procrastinating and feeling horrible about myself. When I started using this simple model, I gave myself a pep talk as soon as those thoughts popped up, I celebrated the thing I’d done and let myself enjoy the momentary reward, and then I turned my attention to the next thing.

And at the end of the week I could look back and see all of it, and I could actually see it coming back into balance. Those early days of Recovery look like:

• Got out of bed

• Had a shower

• Went to the shop

• Meditated

• Slept

A few weeks later, there would be things like:

• Met a friend for tea and cake

• Walked around the park

• Went to a yoga class

And it grew from there. 

At the end of every week, and certainly at the end of every month, my Planner would form the basis of reflection and journaling, where I was able to see how far I’d come, identify challenges, things that I was finding difficult and things that I was avoiding. It became the blueprint for my own recovery and I still look back it now as a record of my recovery.

I used my Planner religiously through the whole first year of my recovery. And when I say that, let me clarify. I didn’t fill it in perfectly, every day. I skipped days. I skipped weeks sometimes. I had bad weeks, or bad months, I went out of balance and brought myself back again, many many times in that first year of recovery. My Planner from that year is not perfect, but that’s why it IS perfect.

Now, I don’t use it as much. I go through periods when I really rely on it, and when I haven’t used it at all for a stretch I actively bring myself back to it to make sure I haven’t gone out of balance somewhere. But I don’t need to record every little achievement and every reward now. I give myself that recognition throughout the day, when I do stuff. I pat myself on the back for a job well done, and bask in the glow of a good moment, I break up my work day with walks and chores and cups of tea in the sunshine. 

I guess what I’m saying is, you don’t have to be a convert forever. You don’t have to become a Planner person. But if you’re Burned Out, this could be a tool that could help you to find your way back to balance. And remember, when you’re Burned Out you are really out of balance, and bringing yourself back to the middle isn’t enough. You have to do all those good things, take the time to rest, to reset, to breathe, to allow yourself to be - those are the achievements, and the benefits they bring are the rewards.

If you aren’t so much right in the boiling pot and looking for a tool to help you to piece yourself back together - a Planner could still be a really useful thing for you. What I like to use mine for more often now is colour coding, and making sure my to do list is manageable. I highlight work in purple, self-care in pink, routine things like meals in yellow, outdoor time in nature in green, and creativity in blue. I can see what my week looks like on reflection and I can balance things out if I notice the colours are weighing too heavily one way or the other.

I can also ensure that I don’t have more than two or three actual substantial things on my to do list. The things that HAVE to be done that day. Because when you actually live a life that is balanced, with space in your day for the things you want to do as well as the things you need to do, you realise that, depending on what the thing is, you really do only have space in your day for two, three, MAXIMUM five things - and if it’s five then two of those things have to be super small.

However I’m using my Planner, it’s always something that’s there to support me and allow me to recognise those achievements, and make space for rewards, and that’s what I want you to think about this week.

Have you ever thought about your day, in this way? How much are you achieving - and how much of those achievements are you recognising? Are you making time and space for yourself?

If you would like to have a go at using my Planner pages, you can! Just sign up to my mailing list via the form below and you’ll receive a free download of my Planner pages - and you can try them out for yourself! I’ll also share the link in my Facebook group, so if you’re not already a member of my Stressed Out to Supernova group head to Facebook and find us there.

And if you are stuck in that boiling pot of Burnout right now and you have no idea how to get out, let alone how to start using a Planner to write down your achievements and your rewards, then remember you can hop on a Zoom call with me and chat any time I have availability.

For more posts and podcasts about Burnout Recovery and Prevention, check out the writing page, the podcast page and subscribe to Your Supernova Moment wherever you listen to podcasts.

Mx