Activity planning is the key!
As an Occupational Therapist we are often tasked with providing intervention to promote resumption of activities for an individual, following an incident that has resulted in some kind of impairment. The impairment has often caused the individual to have difficulty participating in activities as they did previously and often, we just need to help them to adapt to their situation so they can continue with life. Right now, we may all be experiencing some kind of impairments relating to the incident of this global pandemic.
In our practice we have a focus on resuming work activities following illness or injury and facilitating productivity. The precursors to getting back to work are usually around getting back to everyday activities, by getting into a routine and planning activities. We try to educate clients on the importance of balance and help clients structure activities to reflect their own values and roles.
So many articles doing the rounds right now are telling us just that, to help us cope in these difficult times. When we look to literature to find out about proven strategies to manage occupational imbalance, disruption and deprivation these interventions are again around activity modification, environmental adaptations, structure and routine. But, it is also important to remember that coping also often relies on being a little flexible.
When we consider the effects of occupational imbalance, disruption and deprivation it is often, most obviously, reported that the number of activities are affected but also that the quality of performance is affected. The long term deficits that might arise out of poor quality of occupational performance could be really significant, especially in the workplace.
So, how are you going to cope? These are our top 5 tips:
1. Be mindful about what you are actually doing. How are you spending your time? Is it a lot of one type of activity and none of another? Do you have too many activities or too few? Think about balance in the different areas of occupation work, social, leisure and self care. Also think about what is necessary for you to do and what activities you do that help you find purpose.
2. Prioritise and decide on what you need to do and what you want to do everyday – be realistic about this! We’re not all going to be able to use this time to learn another language and start up a business, some of us may just need to cope with everyday demands like getting dressed, cooking and having time to play with our little ones.
3. Plan a routine! Once you know what you want and need to do, put them into a time table. These activities might be big projects like cleaning out an area of your home or getting a proposal complete for work, or maybe they are the things that need to be done regularly like cooking or laundry. You need to have an idea of what each day should include and then try and identify a routine that is as close to real life as possible. If you have children who are trying to complete work assigned to them, structure activity time, breaks, snacks and play as closely to their regular school patterns as possible. If you have work to get done, do this in work hours when possible. Get up and go to bed as you normally would. Schedule in visits to the shop and use grocery lists to help with planning these to be as effective and infrequent as possible. Remember the weekends and try and schedule more fun activities to fill these days.
4. Its also useful to identify new activities to increase your participation, or adapt ones that you may be unable to perform as you did previously. Think about what you want to do and try and find activities that might be similar if you cant pursue some specifically. If you like to travel, watch a documentary or log on to one of the game drives that are being streamed live, read (find out about online resources and free publications during this time), pursue personal projects like gardening, baking or organising your photos. Schedule some social time, facetime or call a friend. The kids love this one too!
5. Be flexible…while coping does depend on routine and predictability, it’s also important to be a little flexible – these are tough times! If you don’t stick to the schedule everyday that’s ok, try again tomorrow. You may need to reorganise things but just keep going. If you identify that you need help coping with your activities effectively, just let an OT know ;-)
Whether this is short term occupational imbalance or disruption, or more significant occupational deprivation where the changes in behaviours now being enforced extend for a period longer than we hope or anticipate, it is crucial to enable and maintain participation in activities to prevent occupational dysfunction.
Implementing practical strategies to maintain activity participation in areas of daily living now, despite the imbalance that is currently being experienced, may be the preventative approach that is required to avoid long term occupational dysfunction that could possibly have a detrimental effect on well being and ultimately on productivity as we start to reintegrate back into the workplace…one day.
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