Intentionally Planning your Year with ME/CFS/Long Covid

Hello and welcome to Believe in ME with Rhona Barton. 

This podcast is about all things Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) related!

I'm Rhona and I lived with ME for almost 10 years during which time, I was bed-bound and wheelchair-bound, welcome to my Podcast.

Hello and welcome to Believe in ME with Rhona Barton. In this week’s episode, the first for 2023, I’m going to be chatting about intentionally planning your year with ME/CFS and Long Covid.

You can head to www.rhonabarton.co.uk/media for more information about me and my story.

Don’t forget that you can review, share & follow the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you’re listening now. 

Ok, let’s jump straight in!

First of all, Welcome to 2023! Happy New Year to you all! I hope you managed to enjoy the transition from 2022 into 2023. I stayed up to hear the Bells at midnight, then headed to bed! I don’t function very well on lack of sleep and I had a family gathering on later in the day, but I do like to ring in the New Year. I usually make it to about quarter past midnight before deciding that sleep is much more inviting than fireworks or TV shows. What about you? Did you manage to see in the New Year? Or were you tucked up, all cosy and warm, in the land of nod?

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of the festive period and, in having a good time, go a little overboard. I’ve done it myself so if it’s happened to you, don’t feel bad about it. Don’t blame yourself. You’ve been making memories with family and friends and that’s lovely to look back on.

Now that we’re into the New Year, lots of people may be start out with great intentions and may have made New Year Resolutions. I’m not a New Year Resolution person! I don’t believe you have to wait for the New Year to decide to make a change. I don’t believe you need to jump on the bandwagon with the latest trend just because it’s a New Year. I do believe, that if you’d had something in your mind for a while that you’d like to try, then get started and try it regardless of the day or date.

And that’s what this week’s episode is about. It’s about thinking about what we’d like to work towards in 2023 and intentionally planning for it. It’s about planning the year according to what is important to you.

I know it’s easy to be influenced by what others are doing and what is trending but take some time to consider if what they are doing is right for you.

Have you ever been asked what your 5-year plan is? It’s thought that it takes about 5 years to achieve tangible long-term success in anything such as building a career or a sustainable business. Nobody is an overnight success! We just don’t see the years of hard work that goes into overnight successes!

But how do they do it? And how can we do it?

The usual way to approach a plan is to break it down into goals. There are short-term goals, medium term goals and longer-term goals. New Year Resolutions set in our minds, the idea of a year’s worth of focus time. This can be both good and bad. It gives us a timeframe to work with, but it can also limit our thinking to just 12 months. This is usually seen as a short-term timeframe although for people with ME/CFS and Long Covid – a year is a long time!

So let’s think about 2023 as our main focus knowing that our goals can roll into 2024 and beyond. To do this though, we have to accept that things can take longer than we anticipate – possibly due to our fluctuating health but also because, generally, people underestimate how long things take!

Whether it’s a 5-year plan, a 1-year plan or something in between, there are some steps to take to get things in order.

Start by thinking about and taking note of the ideas that come to mind. If you’ve listened to last week’s episode, you may well have been reflecting on some areas that I suggested. This in turn, may have sparked some ideas or thoughts about things you’d like to dig into in 2023. So, write these ideas down – I’ll even help you out by popping a link to my notebooks in the show notes! Afterall, you’ll need somewhere to jot down your plans!  

Decide on your life goals. This will help you think and plan with intention. You just have to decide what you want. Now, don’t panic. This can seem like a huge step but the truth is, a lot of people don’t know what their life goals are! So if you don’t have this figured out, don’t worry. People can worry about being wrong or picking the wrong thing and, as humans, we want to be right as it’s comfortable and easy. But what’s wrong to one person, could be a 100% fit for you! People worry about being relatable and not standing out from the crowd or being singled out by their out of the ordinary passion, but you don’t want to end up being a copycat or doing something that doesn’t feel right for you. Put some time in to thinking about what you want over the next year (or 5!). 

Consider how challenging each item is and how important they are for you. You could even give them a score for challenge out of 5 and a score for importance out of 5. For example: If your goal is to write a book, you might deem this as your highest priority goal and so it’s score would be a 1 for importance as it’s the highest priority for you. In terms of how much of a challenge this would be for you, you may already be a keen writer but are restricted in your computer time due to cognitive difficulties and so you note this as a challenge score of 5. It’s very important but it’s also very challenging. When you know the challenge you face and how important each goal is to you, breaking them down into smaller tasks or activities will become easier.

The next step is to break your goals down. That may be for 2023 or it may be over the next 2 or 3 years. Only you will know what timescale is manageable for you given your current commitments and energy levels. 

Now, let’s keep our example of writing a book. Let’s also think about some of the stages that writing a book involves. It’s not just getting the words down on paper. There’s also time needed to edit the manuscript. Time required to write to potential publishers. Then there’s rewrites based on the feedback you receive. You may also want to consider what the finished book will look like so time will be needed to consider cover art and if it’s a hardback or paperback etc etc etc. That’s a lot of things to be done whilst also researching, collating and writing your book. If you list out all of the stages required, work out the challenge score and the priority score, you’ll soon see that your big goal of Write a Book, has been broken down into smaller more manageable parts. Parts that you can schedule into your day, week or month based on your capabilities. 

The next challenge you face is working out your available time and striking a balance between achieving your goals and maintaining your baseline activity levels. Remember that it’s easy to fill our 24hrs on a daily basis but the question becomes, how do you fit in time for your goals in the middles of life’s other demands?

If you have been using an activity tracker, like the free one that’s available via my website, you may have already spotted trends for yourself and can see where you could slot in some time to work towards your goals. 

We each have 168hrs in a week but how we use that time will be based on us as individuals. When you work out how much time you spend each week on your usual activities (which will include things such as sleep and self-care and may include rest time, reading time, family time etc), you will be able to see how much time you have for writing your book. Please keep in mind that you may experience blips in your health and your timeframes may need to be adjusted. At least you have a goal to work towards that’s just for you!

Let’s think about some key take aways from this episode:

1.    2023 is upon us and it gives us the opportunity to consider our goals for the year ahead or even longer – if we want to!

2.    Not everybody knows what their purpose in life is or has life goals so don’t worry if you’re one of them. You’re normal!

3.    If you are planning out your year (or the next 5 years!), keep in mind that people generally underestimate how long it takes to get things done. Allow some slippage time in your plans.

That’s it for today everybody.  I hope you have found this episode helpful and that, if you are planning out your year, it has given you some guidance on how to do so. As a reminder, I’ve popped a link to my Notebooks in the show notes but you can also find them by heading to my website.

I’d love to hear about your plans, if you’re making any so feel free to reach out via any of my social media links or my website. You’ll find me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest as @RhonaBartonCoaching and on Twitter as @RhonaBCoaching.

You can download your FREE Activity tracker by heading to www.rhonabarton.co.uk/links and you can find a link to my notebooks by clicking on the Publications link.

Thank you for listening. Don’t forget that you can review, share & follow the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

I hope today’s a good day for you. Bye for now. 

Don’t forget that you can review, share & follow the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. 

You can also sign-up for my mailing list by visiting www.rhonabarton.co.uk or join my Facebook group – Believe in ME Community by following the Facebook page (@rhonabartoncoaching).