Resource
Planning a low-demand week
How to arrange the next seven days around your energy instead of the calendar, in fifteen minutes.
Some weeks you can do a lot. Some weeks getting through is the achievement. The trick is deciding which kind of week it is before it starts, not halfway through.
On Sunday, or whichever day begins your week, take fifteen minutes and a piece of paper.
- Write down everything that is fixed: appointments, work hours, things with other people in them.
- Mark each one as costly, neutral or restoring. Be honest. A birthday dinner can be costly even if you love the person.
- Count the costly ones. Three or more in a week means it is a low-demand week, whatever the calendar says.
In a low-demand week:
- Move anything movable. One email now saves a cancellation later.
- Put a blank evening after every costly item. Blank means blank, not "catch up on chores".
- Decide the meals in advance. Deciding is what costs energy, not cooking.
- Tell one person it is a low-demand week, so you do not have to explain each refusal separately.
The plan will not survive the week exactly. That is fine. Its job is to make the first decision of each day already made.
If planning like this is the thing you keep meaning to do and never do, it is a good first goal to bring to peer support. Doing it together once makes it much easier to do alone.