For those who struggle with anxiety, worry or feeling overwhelmed, keeping organised in all aspects of life is really important. Simply having the wardrobe door open and clothes spread over the carpet would prevent me from sleeping. Similarly, mentally storing a whole list of chores will lead me to hop frantically from one task to another. Most likely completing none of them in the panic that I might forget one.
Over the last year, I have adapted my lifestyle to reduce unnecessary feelings of stress and anxiety which could be avoided with a little pre-planning, structure and productivity. At first it can feel like more work, but as these organisation tips and practises become part of your daily routine and lifestyle, the benefits totally outweigh all that.
Project planning
Got a project coming up? A wedding, party, job hunt or small business? A new hobby or skill to learn, college or university assignment, or even a home to manage? There is one website I swear by for helping me take the stress and burden out of a positive project. That website is called Trello.
Trello is a user-friendly intuitive website, which is essentially a fancy To Do list. Best bit, it’s FREE! There are paid for upgrades, but you don’t need them. You can create a board for your project, create lists for different aspects, and begin adding cards (your tasks or aspects of the project). You can also add deadlines, checklists, labels and comments. Taking the pressure off of your memory and mind. Channelling all that information overloading your brain, and storing it in one structured place with alerts when action is needed.
Here is a screen grab of what a very simple Trello board looks like, a wedding template I downloaded. Yep – they have templates too! Sign up and give it a go. You will be up and running in minutes, and before long you will be a life-project planning whizz! Trello is also perfect for collaborative projects, as you can add other members to the board and assign them to individual tasks. Useful if you’re running a business or a family.
The free mobile app is an added bonus. Allowing you to update your board whilst out and about, or note down those sudden bright ideas that you don’t want to forget.
Daily To Do List
Do you ever wake up and feel so daunted by the amount of jobs you have to do that day, that you just don’t know where to start? Then you are half way through emptying the dishwasher and spot the floor needs hoovering. So you get the hoover out from the cupboard only to notice the cupboard is a mess. So you begin organising the cupboard and spot an old tin of paint, reminding you that you still haven’t painted over that mark on the wall. You get the picture. Before you know it, the day is over and despite buzzing around the house in an anxiety fuelled frenzy all day, you have actually achieved very little.
Start the day by sitting down with a nice cup of tea, and write a list of all the things you want to do. Try to keep it realistic, just adding the musts for that day which are achievable within the time you have. (You can even have a second list ready, for everything you decide to leave for another day to give yourself a head start next time and empty your mind.) Be realistic, but be specific. Instead of adding “clean the house”, break down every individual task. Maybe you can delegate some of these tasks to someone else, instead of always taking on everything. *Calming sigh*…anxiety soothed.
The best part? Crossing off each task as you have completed it, and slowly watching your list fill with horizontal lines of success!
Struggle with decision fatigue? Read my post Fighting Decision Fatigue for more information and tips.
Wellness Planner
For many women and girls facing mental health struggles such as anxiety, the task of overcoming them with lifestyle changes can in itself feel like another weight to carry. Where do I start? How do I remember to stick to those changes? How do I keep track of my progress?
Introducing the wellness planner! A wellness planner is simply a planner where you plan your time, record your healthy habits, store information and organise your fitness, eating or wellbeing activities. You can use a plain note book, a diary or a wellness planner designed for this purpose. I use a planner made by Kikki.K with a few customisations I added. Here are a list of things you can use your wellness planner for:
- Planning your day
- Ticking off daily healthy habits
- Tracking daily water intake
- Writing your goals
- Planning meals and logging food intake
- Planning and logging exercise
- Listing your self-care “go-to’s” for those hard days
- Recording books you read or want to read
- Noting podcasts you like
- Planning your month
- Reflecting on the week
- Writing the things you are grateful for
- Recording your cycle or hormone symptoms
- Scheduling in “me time” and meditation
Keep a Tidy Home
Your environment is incredibly influential to your mind and mental wellbeing. How can we expect to feel clear headed, calm and collected if we are surrounded by chaos, chores and clutter. Naturally, I am not the tidiest person, and this trait really worked against me and my anxiety.
Tidying as you go throughout the week instead of allowing mess to build up until a “cleaning day”. This will save you time, stress and energy later down the road. If you are prone to overthinking a task (a procrastination queen who prefers to put off even the smallest of tasks!) you are not alone.
Recently I adopted the mental saying “just do it now”. It’s like avoiding the temptation to hit the snooze button on your alarm and jumping straight out of bed instead. It’s hard, sometimes impossible to resist, but over time our thought processes can change.
Wash up after dinner, put your dirty clothes straight in the washing basket, and tidy items away after use. Make the bed before you leave for work, tidy the kitchen before bed, put recycling straight outside in the recycling bin and tidy your make up before you leave. Going upstairs? Take at least one item up with you that needs putting away. Little changes here and there make a big difference.
Write Your Goals
If you are very driven, and have lots of goals you want to achieve involving, for example, fitness, diet, career, hobbies, reading, relationships, your home or travelling – write them all down. Prioritise your goals by writing them in the order of importance to you. You can even add a time frame of when you want to achieve them by. This isn’t about adding pressure, but to take away the burden of remembering them all and to avoid the deadline and measures of success constantly changing or moving further away.
As we grow, it’s natural for our goals to change. Writing dates against all your goals and thoughts can allow you to reflect in the future if you didn’t meet a goal within the time frame, and consider why it might not be the right thing for you now.
Phone Reminders
Whilst mobile phones can often fuel anxiety by constantly reminding us of the busy world around us. With news alerts, social media updates, calls and messages. They can be a handy tool for two reasons.
Firstly, many phones have useful reminders enabling you to set an alert at a particular time or when you reach a location. I use this function every day to take the weight of remembering important tasks off my mind until the time comes to take action.
Secondly, people with worry disorders may have a tendency to get caught in a mental hurricane (as I call it), as negative thoughts about a certain event or idea fly round and round their mind. A useful technique I learned, is to schedule in time later to dedicate to this thought instead of now. You can use phone reminders to do this. More likely than not, when that time arrives, the thought you allowed to carry so much importance earlier, no longer feels worth the stress.
Delegation
Anyone else a complete control freak like me? Fighting the need to do everything yourself can be one of the hardest things to do, but is it worth risking our mental health for perfection? If you are worrying about how much you have to do around your family home, the extra responsibilities you have taken on at work, or the many favours you agreed to do for friends and family – it’s time to delegate! That weight will get a hell of a lot lighter when it’s shared out.
You have a network of friends, family, colleagues, neighbours and professionals around you which you can lean on in times of stress. Just be prepared that one day, you may become that pillar of support for one of them.
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[…] For more tips on routine and organisation, also read Organisation Tips to Reduce Anxiety. […]