Despite it being a Sunday morning, I woke up at 6.30am feeling super-motivated. Perhaps it’s because the weather is glorious, or that I have the option of doing nothing if I want to, or perhaps the fact that I slept for about six hours yesterday afternoon has helped – either way, I jumped out of bed, got dressed and was raring to go. 

As things have become more busy (particularly this year), I have started to change my working patterns to try and avoid burnout – something that I have experienced multiple times since I started working for myself. Previously, I had developed strict daily routines and checklists to help myself become more organised, but over the last six months I have found that it has become less and less helpful. 

Primarily, this is because of peri-menopause. I started to experience peri-menopausal symptoms about five years ago (at the age of 37), and despite having a sort-of diagnosis of it, I have found it difficult to get help from anyone because of my age. Some of these symptoms can be quite difficult to manage – waking up at 3.00am and not being able to get back to sleep, days where I can’t concentrate and brain fog that means I take three times as long to do a simple task, and above all, INSANE hormone fluctuations that leave me feeling utterly euphoric one day, and so depressed the next that I cry because I can’t find my keys. For a long time I fought against it, pushing through while telling myself that I was just being lazy, but after it started becoming detrimental to both my physical and mental health I realised a change was needed.

So instead of fighting it, I now go with how I am feeling. Today is a day of euphoria and wanting to do ALL THE THINGS, so that is exactly what I’m doing while I’m feeling alert and refreshed. It’s the start of a new month so there are stats reports to do for clients, content planning, asset creation and scheduling, and the beauty of it being a weekend means that I can smash my way through my list without being interrupted by a thousand emails and I am much more productive. It also means that tomorrow morning, I can respond to the inevitable ‘have you got the…’ email requests immediately, rather than having to create things reactively. 

In my personal life, the house is pretty clean and tidy, but I have laundry to do and a food shop for the coming week. There is a monthly artisan market taking place just a few roads away which I want to go to, and I want to properly set up my June Bullet Journal Spreads. 

Working like this allows me to take it easy on days where I am feeling low and experiencing brain fog or extreme fatigue, or if I am away at an event / conference, or something exciting happens that I want to go and see, I can do so without having to juggle everything all in one go. 

So I’m going to start and keep going until I have had enough. And later on when I am feeling tired, I can relax knowing that my To-Do list is significantly shorter.