Is it not uncanny how we know so much but do not practise what we know? We know what is good for us, what we shouldn’t do and we can chant all the mantras to support ‘a good life’: A healthy body contains a healthy soul; You become what you eat/think and so forth. But do we live it? Not a chance!
Until we hit a crisis. That is when we visit Dr Google or doctors in the flesh for advice, treatment or medication.
Researchers treating patients with auto-immune conditions like lupus, have discovered a recipe for pain and fatigue management that has changed many lives. They call it Practical Pacing.
Through close observation of people who live with chronic pain, they have noticed certain patterns. When a person has a good day, he or she tries to use every minute to get jobs done. He carries on till pain strikes, then stops, perhaps takes a pain killer and retreats or lies down. Once he feels recovered, he repeats the pattern. On good days he gets a lot done, on bad days the pain free intervals are too short to achieve much.
The problem with this pattern, medical researchers found, is that the productive periods become shorter and the recovery takes longer every time, causing a marked decline in the patient’s physical and mental health. This is how Practical Pacing came into being.
Patients were guided to measure their pain free periods for three different activities: sitting, standing and moving. By using a bad day, they had to time the comfort period until pain strikes and get to a baseline for each. For instance, if it took 30 minutes of standing to trigger pain or discomfort, 15 minutes could be declared the baseline after which the patient should stop standing.
After a period of disciplined sticking to their different thresholds, stopping well before a pain attack, the baselines were slowly incremented. The results in both pain management and recovery time, were phenomenal.
The very same principles can be applied to fatigue and energy management. Step one is to determine your own baselines for sitting, standing and moving. Step two is to analyse your weekly tasks in time slots from waking to going to bed. Apply the traffic light model by marking the energy requirements of each task – red for high energy, yellow for medium and green for low energy. Colour code each day and make sure that you have a weekly overview.
Mark which activities require sitting, standing and moving and build in your baselines for breaks. Then start spacing your energy users to secure a balanced week. If you have a “red Monday” cluttered with high energy tasks, you should know that you are investing in pain, fatigue and unproductivity. Be wise and move some “green” activities into the red block and do this to your entire week, so that it becomes a clever and balanced schedule.
Pacing takes commitment and discipline but it works – scientists have proof of this. Our energy is like our years, limited – managing it wisely, is an investment for life.
