NOTE: The basic idea behind what I do now, I got while going through The Autistic Burnout Workbook by Dr. Megan Anna Neff. I highly recommend checking it out youself if you're struggling with burnout or energy management!
Pacing myself by taking breaks seemed like the obvious first strategy. I'd load the dishwasher, take a break, do a some laundry, take a break, go back to the laundry, take a break, etc. but I never knew how long those breaks needed to be. They either felt like they did nothing or it felt like I was just wasting time because I wanted to take a long break "just in case." Then there was also the cycle of trying to make up for the time "wasted" while taking the break and exerting way too much energy once I started moving again. I was either constantly exhausted or not feeling like I was doing anything.
I bought a wearable device that would track my HRV and give me a budget of HRV "points" that I could use in a day. I could log the activities I would do and see how many points it would use up, theoretically in order to plan for that many points the next time I needed to do that activity. The problem with that (at least for me), on one day, getting the mail would take maybe 1 point and on another day, getting the mail would take half my daily points. It was a complete mystery to me how it would vary so greatly and I didn't know how to plan for that.
This was actually just as frustrating as taking breaks and just as mysterious as the HRV tracking for me. If I stayed within my spoon budget from day to day, even adjusting my budget daily due to special circumstances, tell me why my energy levels were more erratic than before I started tracking and still felt like I wasn't doing anything!
This one worked somewhat okay for me, but I still felt like I wasn't being as efficient as a possible could be. I couldn't figure out why by the end of the day, I barely used up any Reflection Spoons but felt too depleted to use any of them, but felt like being creative but had no physical energy to actual do anything.
Below is what I originally wrote about my spoon budget. I did not have a strict budget (and I still don't), but I am finding that I actually do need one. So I have started the quest to figure out how to make a budgeting system that works for me. Will update again when I learn more!
This may not be for everyone, but I don't give myself a budget for my spoons. I just tally and if it starts looking like it's getting towards the upper range of the data that I've already collected or I can feel myself being too drained, I ease up on that category. I've found this works a lot better for me because as soon as I set a restriction for myself, I automatically go straight into self-destruction mode. I use my spoon system as more of a monitoring mechanism rather than hard rules for myself. Always do what works best for you!
I've divided my spoons into different categories that work well for me and seem to cover everything that I do. They have evolved over time as I used them so I'd suggest just starting somewhere and tweaking as you go. For example, I've split one spoon type into two and I've even changed the name of one because the old name didn't seem to align with the tasks I was counting it towards.
Something to note is that for most activities, I could more than one spoon type. You may understand more after you keep reading.
My Spoon Categories:
Creative - I count this spoon when I'm painting or drawing, but I also count it if I'm trying to find a creative solution to a problem
Cognitive - Speaking of problem solving, I could this one as well for that. I also count this spoon if I'm researching or making a spreadsheet or even listening to an informational audiobook
Executive - This one gets counted alongside a lot of other spoons for a lot of tasks. I count this one whenever I do something that could be construed as a "to do" checklist item (make an appointment, load the dishwasher, get groceries, etc.) I usually count this spoon for anything I feel like I used any ounce of needing to push myself to do it
Physical - Pretty self explanatory, but I've noticed that I do need to count this one even after just sitting at a desk for awhile as it makes my back hurt. If I'm feeling any pain or if I wake up extra tired, I will mark down some physical spoons just to show I have less to use that day
Social - I count this for for every interaction I have with strangers and I count it for interactions I have with loved ones if the interaction made me me need to think about what to say (some interactions can be more effortless than others)
Emotional - Another pretty self explanatory one. I generally only count these spoons for heavier emotions and I will also count some at the beginning of the day if I'm already starting out not feeling my best emotionally
Reflective - This one is an interesting one for me and the backbone of this website. I count Reflective Spoons if I take things about of my brain and put it out into the world. I'm not talking about facts and figures about whatever, but more my own personal thoughts and feelings. So this can look like journaling, talking to a therapist or even writing a to do list that I've been storing in my head.
I tried just writing a basic description of each of my spoons, but I may end up writing more about some of the individual spoons later on my Realizations page because I had a lot of thoughts that I didn't feel were pertinent to this post.. article.. I don't know what this is called..
I found that simple tally marks have worked best for me. I started out with just writing down each category and adding tallies as I went through my day*. This seemed to be the lowest threshold to collect the data rather than me writing down each individual task and recording the number of spoons it used. I may not be able to look back and see how many spoons getting the mail used on a specific day, but from what I learned while monitoring my HRV, activities aren't always consistent in how much energy they use anyways. So is the historical data even worth recording? I decided not.
Speaking of inconsistent spoon usage, I don't have a set number of spoons I count for each type of task. I do the task and if it was an easy/quick one, I'll usually tally just one or two spoons depending on if it used multiple categories. And if the task seemed a little tougher or more draining, I'll tally more accordingly. It's extremely subjective, but the subject is me so that feels acceptable.
This concept brought up in The Autistic Burnout Workbook was super intriguing to me. The concept that the way you spend your energy has a pattern to it. It's not something I've ever noticed about myself, but apparently some people have, not only daily energy patterns, but seasonal patterns as well. Since it wasn't a familiar area of reflection for me, I decided to stick to just looking at my daily patterns.
I started some data collection by adding some additional information to my tally sheets. At the end of each day, I'd write down which time of day felt easiest for each category. For example, I tend to stay up late into the night crafting so I wrote "Late Night" for my Creative Spoon and if I got a lot done around the house around lunch time, I wrote "Early Afternoon" for Executive and maybe Physical, depending. After about a week, I had some data that I could pull together and, surprisingly to me, there was a clear pattern!
These are the Time of Day categories that I use; you'll see that they are very loosely divided because I have pretty bad time blindness and looking back to review my day chronologically is difficult (and I think I'll put my current pattern here too so I can look back to see if it changes with the seasons! Note to self: it is currently early April):
Wake Up - This usually pertains to about the first hour of being awake
Best Spoon(s): Reflective, Cognitive
Mid Morning - This is the time up until I eat lunch
Best Spoon(s): Reflective
Early Afternoon - This is the time until my husband finishes his workday
Best Spoon(s): Physical, Social
Evening - This is the time until my kids go to bed
Best Spoon(s): Social, Creative
Late Night - This is the time until I go to bed
Best Spoon(s): Creative
You'll notice that Executive and Emotional don't even show up in the top of the data here. And that's why I analyzed the data in a second way where I look at each individual spoon category and determine when I said was the best time of day for that category. For example, The best times of day for me to use my Executive Spoons are Mid Morning and Evening. So even though other spoons may be easier to use than Executive during those times of day, if I need to use Executive Spoons, that's where I should shoot to use them. Plus, remember, Executive Spoons are usually tallied alongside other spoons anyways. As for Emotional, my best time of day is Mid Morning and that's another spoon that tends to be tallied alongside other spoons as well.
Now I can use this data as I go throughout the day by using my spoons during their optimal time of day and I found that I can do a lot more in a day this way over any of the other systems I used before. Check out my Popsicle Stick Tasks to see an easy way to determine what tasks to do at any given moment.
I'll give you a scenario. It's late at night which is the optimal time for me to use my Creative Spoons. Unfortunately, I don't really have the Executive Spoons to really work on a craft project. Something that my occupational therapist Malia suggested to me was to find the "5% version" of whatever it is I want to do. So what I really want to do is paint, but that's a lot of set up and I don't have that energy, so instead, I grab a coloring book (now for me, a regular coloring book is like a 0% version and give me no joy, but she suggested a reverse coloring book) and it still allows me to be creative without needing any other spoons. What I've noticed is that after spending some time working on the coloring book, I'll start to feel like I can do more. This low threshold Creative activity actually gives me a little momentum into having a few more Executive Spoons. The same happens when I use purely Reflective Spoons as well (this whole website is actually just my way of replenishing spoons!).
I'm sure the patterns and relationships are different for everyone, but I'd hypothesize that everyone does have some version of these relationships where using some spoons in some way will replenish others. I'd definitely recommend trying to take notice of these things because it could really change the way you go about your daily life.
*Full disclosure: I don't tally my spoons in a notebook anymore. I spent the Cognitive Spoons and created a personal web app for myself to easily tap to tally and rate my best times at the end of the day and it generates graphs for me so that I can see at a glance when the best time of day is to do anything. The app is nowhere near perfect and has a lot of quirks that I'm aware of and can work around to make it work for me. If I'm able to make it quirk free in the future, I'd love to make it available to the public because it makes tracking my spoons so much easier.
