It seems that Patreon redid how deactivated accounts are viewed, so I was able to get access to a bunch of my old posts! My “time management for sick people” post seemed to help a lot of folks back then, so I’ve salvaged and updated it.
Here’s a story about how my body betrayed me and I had to totally restructure how I managed my time. Come along for the ride! For some background, I used to be a highly efficient person when it comes to tackling the to-do list. I’d been an adherent to a modified version of GTD for years, and it enabled me to manage numerous projects at once and milk my free time for everything it was worth. I got very used to being extremely productive over the early part of my career.
From 2015-2017 I got deeply sick. My fibromyalgia was flaring up out of control, and at the time I was still trying to just push through it (stupid). I wasn’t able to operate at the productivity level that I’d been used to (and when I did try to operate “normally”, I ended up just making myself more sick).
In 2016 I did an academic residency at Harrisburg University, and the schedule was flexible enough that I was able to work out a time management system designed to focus on healing and get out of my bad “do all the things” habits. The method was designed with help from Jason Vandenberghe, and the goal was to adapt my schedule to my limitations at that time.
Specifically, it was designed to both allow myself room to heal AND to keep myself from overdoing things and taking on more responsibilities than I was capable of handling. The system worked out really well for me, and helped me get back on my feet.
If you are used to being a productive overachiever and have found yourself in a situation where you can’t juggle as much as you are used to (sick, depressed, injured, burnt-out) then perhaps this method will help you in the same way it helped me.
I called it “Block Scheduling” (which is funny to me because that’s what my high school scheduling method was called).