Some thoughts on schedules and escaping the calendar for mental health

What's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of the PW Podcast. This one, I'm thinking about scheduling and escaping the calendar, which to anybody who has a full time day job, any of those kind of lifestyles that require you to be at certain places, certain times, on a regular schedule, you know, or meetings or any of those kind of examples. Right? Basically, what I'm saying is we all live by some kind of schedule and calendar, but when I get to the weekend, I like to escape those routines because it gives me the freedom and the space within my brain to say, hey, you know what?

You got a couple of days to do what you want when you want and you don't have to constantly be checking things that's gonna give me some level of anxiety because I've got a meeting coming up or I've got an appointment coming up or something that I need to do and I think that is a key part of what gives me the anxiety about constantly checking these calendars during the week is that feeling of, okay, what should I be doing next? Am I due to be doing something? Should I get ready for something? Did I miss something? And so when it goes to the weekend and my personal projects and my side projects, all of those kind of things, yes, I have a kind of schedule that I follow for recording podcasts and for live streams and all of those kind of things, but it is loose.

It's not gonna kill me if I don't do one of those or if I miss one of them. Right? Now, yeah, I might feel bad about it for a little while, but ultimately, I need time away from a calendar and a schedule and in my opinion, I think everybody does. I think that whilst I like things that make me productive, right, and productivity and and all of those kind of things that that I've talked about many times in the past. There are times when it's just mentally healthy to turn those off and walk away for a gap.

Right? Whatever that gap may be, in my case, weekends. And I just wanna put this out here for you all to think about because I've noticed that folks who retire, they go through this period of it's like a honeymoon period of great, I've escaped schedules and meetings and all of this kind of thing. And then after a while, they realize what do I do now? And that to me has me thinking, yeah, that that's the problem these days.

Right? We're all attached to some kind of schedule or calendar whether we realize it or not. And when, for example, the day job one is taken away from us, we suddenly feel like what what do I do? There's there's nothing to tell me what I should be doing. Right?

And that's to varying degrees for us all. Absolutely. But it is something I think about because I can go crazy and block out my time and and do all these things. And again, I'm not talking about day job commitments here, right? We've all got those and you should honor those, but I'm talking about those things that you create for yourself, right?

And whatever that may look like for you. And I have tried so many tools in the past to try and force myself to be respectful of you're like, okay. I am gonna record the pw podcast on a Sunday afternoon. And so I scheduled that time and everything else, and then, yeah, maybe that works for about a week or 2 weeks. And before I know it, I'm ignoring those scheduling blocks because I just don't feel like doing it or I don't feel like doing a stream tonight, those kind of things.

And it's okay and it's empowering to admit to yourself, I can't do that. That's not me. Right? There there is no magic solution, however hard I try to force myself to fit into something because my brain knows this is optional. I created this for myself and, therefore, I have the option to uncreate it.

Right? And there were folks that can get past that and have great discipline, and I fully respect them for that. But I know that my self discipline only goes so far. And then, essentially, my brain says, you need to take a break from this. Right?

It it it's like a form of burnout in some ways. Anyway, I want to put that out in this episode just sharing some thoughts on that But I'd love to hear from you on this reach out to me peterwitham.com, right? There's a contact form there and Reach out to me and if you want to come on the podcast podcast and talk about this and you have opinions or thoughts and things that work for you or things to try or you think that I'm just completely wrong Love to talk about all of that Again, reach out to me Peter Witham dot com. Other than that, folks, enjoy yourselves, take time, and relax. We all need it.

I'll speak to you in the next episode.