By Abir (HSCA’s Neighbour Night Facilitator)
Neighbour Night: Thursday, September 4th, 5:30-7:30pm
Make your own pocket journal Decorate the cover, create your own daily to-do pages, and take home a fun, practical little notebook. Perfect for back-to-school—or just for fun!
RSVP & join us at Claire.l@hsca.ca
September can be a busy month for most of us.
When I moved back to Calgary in September of 2012, I felt overwhelmed by all the items on my to do list. I was experiencing anxiety, insomnia, and binge eating as a result.
When someone would ask me for something that took up my time, I would add it to my to do list making it feel never ending and demotivating.
I went to the Calgary Counseling Centre for support as they had couseling appointments with sliding scale fees based on income.
The counselor suggested breaking down my to do list of 20 items into separate lists and giving myself 3 to do items a day as that was more reasonable and less overwhelming than having 1 list with 20 items.
The counselor validated my anxiety by pointing out that because my list was not broken down into items that needed to be completed once versus weekly or monthly that it did look overwhelming.
Getting organized started with managing my time and my expectations of myself so I could communicate them to others.
I got into the habit of dividing my day into 3 parts:
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
If I worked a full day (9 hours) that counted as a morning task and afternoon task leaving me with the capacity to work on 1 task from my to do list in the evening.
It was also important to plan time for relaxing and having fun.
Looking at my to do list in its new format after my couseling appointment I realized that my to do list actually required 1 month and not 1 day - no wonder I was feeling so stressed and my list was feeling unmanageable!
The benefit of pacing myself was being to able to explain to others that as much as I wanted to help, my schedule for that month was already full.
By taking 2 full sheets of paper and cutting them in half, then cutting them in half again and stapling them in the middle to make a booklet I was able to make myself a day by day planner that fit in my pocket.
Naming my to do list something fun and personalizing it with stickers or art made it feel fun.
Getting organized means being practical with ourselves. Self care in this way helped me set boundaries.
If people care about us they will be able to understand that we need to put ourselves first and take care of our commitments before those of others.
I felt satisfaction when I looked at the crossed out completed tasks in my to do list in its new format at the end of the month and saw how much I had accomplished.
In the end, reducing my stress helped me get more done.
Once you get into the habit of organizing your to do list over a month in this way, you can start using an online calendar to plan out your time weeks in advance.
