Have you been feeling pretty low or anxious lately? Well, what have you been spending your time doing?
It's difficult to feel good when we aren't giving ourselves enjoyable or satisfying activities.
It may be that we feel lethargic, and spend time doing what seems "easy." It's useful to check if it really is that easy, because sometimes the activity may make us feel more miserable because we don't enjoy it much.
This daily activity schedule, adapted from David Burns' book Feeling Good and based on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, is a simple yet effective way to help identify how we spend our day and which of our activities give us more pleasure or satisfaction.
Each day has a space for activities we might engage in over the day. One simply has to note what they actually did at different points in the day (which can range from lying in bed on your phone, to having a shower, watching a show or studying) and rate them on pleasure or mastery.
Through the day, we can rank each activity in the ratings columns on a scale of 0-5. The pleasure rating refers to the sense of satisfaction derived from a particular action. The mastery rating refers to the sense of accomplishment or learning felt during an activity. It may be high because of something that you had been putting off for a while, like washing your clothes, or that is out of your comfort zone, like sending in a job application.
After a few days of recording, we review and decide which activities to include more of, and how to increase payoff of activities that are rated low on the scales or, if possible, reduce the time spent on them.
References:
Burns, D. D., & Beck, A. T. (1999). Feeling good: The new mood therapy.
Barlow, D.H. (Ed.) (2014). Clinical Handbook of Psychological Disorders
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