As busy as you are, your personal health must always come above every other responsibility. Your work is necessary, but it won’t be done well (or at all) without time to take care of yourself. Luckily, in order to pay attention to both your job and your health, you don’t have to go very far. You can utilize your online calendar to cater to both and ensure they get the attention they require.

1. Integrate Your Other Accounts

We all have so much going on in our lives that it can be a mental strain to keep track of it all. The odds are that you already use the calendar program that fits your career needs the most appropriately. It may be pretty easy already to enter new appointments and meetings, but why not streamline things even further? Many calendars offer the integration of other program accounts so that actions in one can affect the other. If you get a meeting e-vite, your calendar app can see and automatically enter it into your schedule.

Similarly, other programs that involve documents, photos, and even video calls can link these things to your calendar. No matter how many programs and accounts you have, this will help you consolidate them. You won’t even have to leave your calendar application to take advantage of these services — they’ll all be close by. It’ll help you manage everything without jumping around.

2. Make Time for Mental Health Exercises

It’s important to reiterate just how much of an impact mental health has on your productivity. It often goes forgotten in daily life, but without mental energy for something, your results and passion will suffer. Use your calendar to set aside short periods of time throughout the day for mental health exercises like meditation. Don’t fall into the fear of being wasteful — your refreshed mindset will more than make up for that time.

An effectively restorative exercise can take whichever form fits your situation. Meditating for fifteen minutes, listening to cathartic music, or even just a quick few deep breaths can be enough.

You can do a quick restorative exercise in any setting — including at the office — even if it limits you from more intense activities. Improvement will be either immediate or gradual (or both!), but you’ll be less stressed than before by making this small effort.

3. Arrange for Breaks and Free Time

Depending on your mental health in general, mindful exercise may not be enough of a break for you. Don’t push yourself to meditate if it still feels too taxing or controlled; it’ll only put more strain on you. Instead, allow yourself to take a totally mindless break. Browse the internet, play mobile games, take a step outside, etc. Do some things you would not otherwise feel comfortable doing on a strict schedule.

Corporate emphasis on practicing mindfulness for efficiency’s sake versus mindless breaks is a pitfall of modern society’s need for productivity. If the former works for you, that’s perfect — but don’t force your breaks for promised productivity. Sometimes all you really need is to turn your brain off for a second and just be. If you’re pushing for progress every second, eventually, you’re going to run out of gas.

4. Get an Accessible Bird’s-Eye View

Planning these time slots can be overwhelming, with all of your other responsibilities alongside them. In addition, the certainty of your schedule lessens as you look into the future where plans are less fixed. Over time, your schedule will change, so you’ll need to have a longer-term view of everything to fit self-care in. Any standard calendar app will allow different “calendar views” to see your current day, week, or month at a glance.

Your calendar is most helpful if you work better visually because you can move around events with a click and drag. Repeated events display in a pattern that can help you visualize what appointments or responsibilities you have that may interfere with other arrangements you have to make. Any new commitment can easily be added to your calendar in an accessible spot you have open. With some practice, you will gain complete control over your calendar with ease.

5. Separate Responsibilities Based on Priority

Applying equal importance to work and rest is the best thing you can do for your wellness. But when it comes to the job itself, it can help categorize and prioritize different types of tasks. Say, for example, that half of your workday is scheduled appointments, and the other half involves general management tasks. Client meetings are naturally more urgent and thus less feasible to move around.

Therefore, you know where your attention is most needed and can allocate it accordingly. You can adjust your entire schedule to accommodate this based on how your energy shifts throughout the day. For example, if you have more energy in the morning (and have the ability to), you can front-load your schedule. If your days start slow, you can give yourself the time to get up to speed.

Your online calendar is all about you. You can use it to customize your day around set events to help things along as smoothly as possible.

When it comes to your wellness, care and attention are paramount to that smoothness. So use your calendar to make the most of your day and take care of yourself in the process.

Image Credit: by Monstera; Pexels; Thank you.

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