In these blogs I am hoping to prvide some help with being at home and at work. Although many of us would love to stay at home more, our mental health can be compromised as we are denied some of the basic things us humans need.

One of the reasons Covid19 is causing some outrageous behaviour and denial by some, is that humans need a degree of predictability to feel safe and in control. The one thing we know about Covid19 is that it is unpredictable. We have no collective experience and we can not predict how it will all work out which is leading to everyone feeling out of control on a global scale and individually.

So if we can regain some control, we can feel safer. But how can we regain control? In my last blog I talked about making a timetable. Here’s some reasons why timetables help us to regain control:

Timetables help us give structure to our week; if we can look ahead to the week and see what we have in store and prepare. We can feel safe in the knowlege that we have a plan and then stick to the plan just like the Nike advert says; “just do it”.
Timetables show the ‘ebb and flow’ in our lives. Humans are designed to ebb and flow. Let’s think about our ancestors who lived in tribal or village communities, they followed the circadian rhythms; their body clock was tuned to the natural rhythm of the day, they would sleep when it was dark and wake when it was light. They spent time socialising in the village after hunting and at times would need to defend their homes. They ebbed and flowed between activity and rest. We may have progressed to working at desks and using screens, but our brains have not, our brains still need to ebb and flow to work efficiently.
Timetables help us to compartmentalise. Our brains are not designed to do more than one thing at a time, but in our society we are often expected to multi-task, or to answer questions when we are focused on something else. Overthinking can exhaust us; having so much to do can overload us and leave us feeling stressed. By timetabling our week we can allow time for each aspect of our work and our lives, when a thought comes in to our head we don’t have to deal with it there and then, because we have allocated time for it, here is an example of how it might work:
I have a Skype meeting coming up next Tuesday when I am expected to present a coaching plan to be delivered during June. I start to worry that I don’t know what to put in the plan, so I put aside a couple of hours for planning on Thursday and another couple of hours on Friday, each time I have a thought connected with the plan I can write it down and refer to it in the time I have allocated.
Brain space is freed and over thinking stopped.
Timetables allow us to change our plans. If we find a conference call is put in when we had planned to exercise, for examble, then move the exercise to a different time, but still do it.

I have attached some templates that will help you to organise your time, if you are more visual you might prefer to mind map, or you can colour code your topics and blocks of time as I have done.

#stayathome strive and thrive 2 'Timetabling'